It Used To Be Said That By

The Literary Interview Won't Tell You What A Writer Is Like. Far More Compellingly To Some, It Will Tell You What A Writer Is Like To Interview.

When Communism Failed, It Wasn't A Good Idea That Had Gone Wrong, It Was A Bad Idea That Had Been Sustained With Incredible Determination In The Face Of All The Commonsense Arguments, And At The Cost Of 20 Million Lives At Least, In Russia, To Build The Socialist Utopia.

I Would Say That The Writers I Like And Trust Have At The Base Of Their Prose Something Called The English Sentence. An Awful Lot Of Modern Writing Seems To Me To Be A Depressed Use Of Language. Once, I Called It "vow-of-poverty Prose." No, Give Me The King In His Countinghouse. Give Me Updike.

You Can't Sort Of Write The Novel As If You're Taking Dictation From Heaven.

Probably Human Cruelty Is Fixed And Eternal. Only Styles Change.