I was a radioman when I first went into the Navy, so I learned to type by taking Morse code. So I was using the typewriter from day one. My handwriting wasn't any good anyway.

The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

I think there's a necessity for some attachment to the spiritual world and, in a way, people really have to have it.

I start early in the morning. I'm usually out in the woods with the dog as soon as it gets light; then I drink a whole lot of tea and start as early as I can, and I go as long as I can.

There’s only one subject for fiction or poetry or even a joke: how it is. In all the arts, the payoff is always the same: recognition. If it works, you say that’s real, that’s truth, that’s life, that’s the way things are. ‘There it is.’

What is worst about America was acted out. What is best in America doesn't export.

Everybody's after a new morning. What do we have to run up and salute tomorrow?