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.

If you haven't fought for your life for something you want, you don't know what's life all about.

The lessons I learned that were most important were the ones that hurt my feelings.

I try very hard to be fair, and I look for ironies. In a way, I live on ironies as a novelist.

I write a very rough first draft of every chapter, then I rewrite every chapter. I try to get it down in the first rewrite, but some chapters I can't get quite right the third time. There are some I go over and over and over again.

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

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.