I don't think we need a critic to negotiate with the audience. People say, "Who are you writing for?" I'm writing for myself but my audience is anybody who knows how to read. I think a story should engage anybody who knows how to read. And I hope that my stories do, maybe on a different level for more sophisticated readers than, say, a high school kid, but still a story has got to grab you. That's why we read it.

To be a friend of the earth, you have to be an enemy of man.

I'm extremely worried. I'm worried about the survival of our species, worried about what we're doing, worried about being Americans, worried about depletion of resources. On the other hand, we are trying. We are trying to understand our impact on the environment.

I have very rarely written autobiographical stuff. "Greasy Lake" and some other works have some autobiographical elements, as does "Birnam Wood," the one I chose to end [this collection] with. I lived in that house and some of my feelings are expressed in it, but it's not autobiography. It was not me and that didn't happen exactly that way.

The professorial dictum has always been to write what you know, but I say write what you don't know and find something out. And it works.

Criticism can be wonderful, especially in making connections in an interpretive way. But by applying theories randomly, it's an interesting exercise, but I don't think it illuminates the literature.

One of the problems I have with many writers is their stories are all somewhat similar. They might be very good, but they're always on the same turf. I don't have those limitations.