Some prisons don't allow guitar because the strings can be detached and used as weapons.

Technically I feel total fluidity in writing. I feel there's nothing technically that I can't do the way a certain sort of pianist feels that. But that doesn't mean it comes easily. It doesn't.

Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.

It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.

There was an American girl, Priscilla Johnson. She worked for U.P. in Moscow. She knew [John] Kennedy, and she met [Lee Harvey] Oswald around the same time I did. But I can tell you some­thing else almost as curious.

When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.

Most secrets should never be told, but especially those that are more menacing to the listener than to the teller.