Why does one write? Because it isn't there! Unlike Everest and other celebrated eminences. Beginners sometime ask me how a novel is written, the answer to which is: Any way at all. One knows only when it is finished, and then if one is at all serious, he will never do it the same way again.

Provincial American cities evoke in me a terrible feeling of desolation as evening falls and the citizenry retires to home, peevish wife and importunate children. Whereas, in Manhattan at any hour of the night, one can step into the street and encounter a werewolf, or at the very least a derelict who will vomit on one's shoes.

I need some rest between novels, but I can never take much because life is unbearable to me unless I can escape from it into fiction.