I started writing serious books so late because I knew Id be accused of riding on my fathers coattails.

The biggest impact my father had on my life was teaching the importance of literacy.

For someone who loves literature, and all books on principle, being asked to name three titles over a half century of serious reading is akin to asking one to recall their three favorite sunsets.

My father thought of himself as a tradesman. A craftsman.

My father valued patriotism above all other social obligations, but he had his own particular interpretation of just how true patriotism was meant to function.

You didnt grow up in the shadow of John Steinbeck. He put you on his shoulders and gave you all the light you wanted.

I like writing, but I write for self-improvement more than I do for money.

My father believed, like Pericles, that a mans genius could be easily judged by the number of unenlightened fools set in phalanx against his ideas.

Plot makes the character just as history makes the man.

Since I cant write the greatest American novel, Im going to write the longest American novel.

If we as a society work diligently in every other area of life and neglect the family, it would be analogous to straightening deck chairs on the Titanic." - Dov Brezak

I think the hard work of writing is just how long a book is terrible before it's good.

I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.

A Society in which the people's wants do not exceed their possessions is not a Socialist society.

I realized that the one person who could break my heart is the only one who should have it.

The New York Times ,the New York Times is actually telling the Clinton, both of them that they need to come clean on all the money where it came frоm.

The machine has several virtues... One may lean back in his chair and work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around.

For a lot of us, we feel nostalgic about something with distance, and then [when] we go back to that thing, you remember why we left in the first place.

The merit claimed for the Anglican Church is that, if you let it alone, it will let you alone.

I kept thinking I would be spending my life up to my elbows in shampoo.