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

I've always remembered. This fellow said to me - if you think someones'doing you wrong, it's not for you to judge. Kill them first and then God can do the judging.

I was under the influence of the early modern masters, Fitzgerald and Steinbeck and Hemingway, especially, when I was a kid. I reacted against writers like Barth and John Hawkes. I did not care for the post-modernist stuff; my allegiance was to realism.

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

I think everybody must be aware that this society is a whole lot shakier now than it was before the war. I was trying to examine, in 'Dog Soldiers,' the process of that blow falling on America

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

The desires of the heart...are as crooked as a corkscrew.