That was one of the reasons I became a writer - I never really had that many friends. I would read a lot, and listen to music. And that was my life.

Your memories from your early childhood seem to have such purchase on your emotions. They are so concrete.

Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up.

All roads lead to Wall Street, but we feel the effects of Wall Street on every street corner. Certainly in Syracuse, N.Y., where I live.

The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.

The novel is about, for me, sustained and organized looking. I do think that people have a hunger for a sustained engagement, that concentration that the book can offer.

I am always trying to do something new and different. The first step is curiosity, questions. You pay attention to what fascinates you. If you can't shake it, there is something there.

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.

Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.

I was very surprised when I heard that I had been chosen to receive the James Cardinal Gibbons Award.

A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional...values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process

Pray that I may be very little in my own eyes, and not rob my dear Master of any part of his glory.

Every novelist should possess a hermaphroditic imagination.

To have a positive religion is not necessary. To be in harmony with yourself and the universe is what counts, and this is possible without positive and specific formulation in words.

The kiss lasted forever as Otto Frank kept talking from behind me. "And my conclusion is," he said, "since I had been in very good terms with Anne, that most parents don't know really their children.

I don't need much more money, and I thought that when I retired that nobody would want to talk to me anymore. Then I did, and people still want to talk to me.

Some take their gold in minted mold, and some in harps thereafter, but give me mine in bubbles fine and keep the change in laughter.

There are better starters than me but I'm a strong finisher.

You can take a kid out of Rosengård, but you can never take Rosengård out of that kid