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

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

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

When rewriting, move quickly. It's a little like cutting your own hair.

You don't want to depend on an editor. If you want to regret something for the rest of your life, you want to make sure you're responsible for it.

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.’

I really, really wanted to write. I loved language. I loved literature. I loved reading. I never read a foreign language, I'm afraid, but I loved Flaubert. I loved the 19th-century classics. I love Thomas Hardy. I wanted to be a goof on a bus, but I wanted to write more.