A new sickness invaded Jerry, the sickness of knowing what he had become, another animal, another beast, another violent person in a violent world, inflicting damage, not disturbing the universe but damaging it.

I am frightened by today's world, terrified by it. I think that comes out in the books. I'm afraid of big things. Some of these schools have three thousand kids, and even the size of the schools frightens me. Big government frightens me; so does big defense.

I don't like to think in terms of writing ten or twelve pages a day. Usually I'm writing a scene, and it's always with the idea, "I wonder what is going to happen." Or sometimes I write about something that affected me emotionally the day before and that I don't want to lose. I'm very unorganized at first; but finally it comes into a structure where consciously I'm working on a novel per se.

Do I dare disturb the universe? Yes, I do, I do. I think. Jerry suddenly understood the poster--the solitary man on the beach standing upright and alone and unafraid, poised at the moment of making himself heard and known in the world, the universe.

I'm not a reader of young adult fiction for the simple reason that these novelists are writing for adolescents, so they are not writing for me.

I take real people and put them in extraordinary situations.

It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace.