There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.

Our most noted satirists are true columnists and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented exposé.

Sometimes my characters are not myself.

Writing doesn't mean necessarily putting words on a sheet of paper. You can write a chapter while walking or eating.

You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing- you can always repent, atone : but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing.

I discovered ... that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our role models, as Woody Allen puts it).

But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?" I asked, for no good reason. "Is Jorge right?" "Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .