Are you happy here?" I said at last. He considered this for a moment. "Not particularly," he said. "But you're not very happy where you are, either.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

Your money is just a condition to get my business, your professionalism is the price.

It is good netiquette to use domains that do not allow spam, hate, or violence. NetworkEtiquette.net

The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark.

A happy marriage is a new beginning of life, a new starting point for happiness and usefulness.

I love seeing black people do normal things, being judged as normal people.

Your day usually follows the direction of the corners of your mouth. So SMILE.

The plot is not very important to me, though a novel must have one, of course. It's just a line to hang the washing on.

I wouldn't characterize anybody who fought in Vietnam as a war hero. In 23 bombing sorties, there must have been civilians that were killed and there's no heroism to that.

The best way to know and destroy an enemy is to pretend to become his friend.

There's is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford. And I like money.