A man I know who writes and aspires to be a novelist does very little reading, and he's not that successful. But I think it's because he's like the kid who wants to be a ballplayer and never goes to the ballpark or tries to hit a ball. So I'd say reading is the most important thing that I do, besides the actual writing. I'm always asking as I read, "How did the writer do this? Why do I suddenly have tears in my eyes? Why am I crying?"

Writing, even though it's hard work, is really a joy when you get these characters to come alive. It's hard to trace where they come from. I can't say that I am sitting here one night at nine o'clock and that a character occurs to me. The magic for me happens at the typewriter.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

I find that most books that I don't like are those in which the authors have indulged themselves. I can almost sense when they're writing something for themselves.

Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.