The peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidays

The peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidays

It's fine, precise, detailed work, the infinitely small motor management of diamond cutters and safecrackers that we do in our heads.

But it's hard to talk about art. Maybe there should be a law against it, some First Amendment gag order like crying fire in a crowded theater.

I would never write about anyone who is not at the end of his rope.

Life's tallest order is to keep the feelings up, to make two dollars' worth of euphoria go the distance. And life can't do that. So fiction does.

Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism. There is no particular religious tradition in my work. There is only one psychological assertion that I would insist upon. That is: the SELF takes precedence.