The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.

You can't do the end of the world in a conventionally dramatic way or Boy Meets Girl way.

Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States.

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.

I like to work at night.

There is no power on earth that can loosen a man's grip on his own throat

I met The Beatles and Stones at the same time, because Michael Cooper was doing several of their album covers.