Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.

More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.

You never want to have to give your child bad news of any kind.

I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.

Kenneth Branagh. There was a time in my life when people would tell me constantly that I look like him. I could do a lot worse than that.

New York is ultimately not the synthesis but merely the sum of its unfathomable subjectivities, its personal histories, its uncategorisable figures.

You should not really entertaining anyone else, but trying to be yourself, because there are already more good books than you or I could ever read in our lifetime.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

I once saw John Updike get in front of a crowd and read a story that he'd written in 1958, and I just thought, I can't even look at stuff I wrote a year ago, I can't believe he's doing this.

That's a long way of saying no, I'm always too bound up in thinking about the characters in whatever I'm working on and trying to make good to dwell on characters from previous books.

Luckily for you, you can close the book The Postman Always Rings Twice and break out of it, and James M. Cain can't. I can't think of any redeeming feature he has, but he's extremely compelling.

I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman.

Author says the ineffectual U.S. Navy of two centuries ago lost two thirds as many men to duelist bullets as to sea hazards.

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

We must all live so that our children do not have to pay for our deeds.

No one's going to see my mistakes; I just need the safety of these mistakes to lead me to the right answers.

The best was The Yardbirds. I still love The Yardbirds and The Zombies.

The fundamental premise is that neither the United States or the international community is going to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

Advertising has always been a huge unrecognised source of outdoor relief for the arts.

Generally, health is just so heavily regulated. It's just a painful business to be in. It's just not necessarily how I want to spend my time.

It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.