You Become A Serious Novelist By Living

We Seem To Believe It Is Possible To Ward Off Death By Following Rules Of Good Grooming.

The Best Moments Involve A Loss Of Control. It's A Kind Of Rapture, And It Can Happen With Words And Phrases Fairly Often - Completely Surprising Combinations That Make A Higher Kind Of Sense, That Come To You Out Of Nowhere. But Rarely For Extended Periods, For Paragraphs And Pages - I Think Poets Must Have More Access To This State Than Novelists Do.

To Portray America Over The Past Twenty Years Or So, I Would Think Immediately Of Football, Probably The Super Bowl In Its Sumptuous Suggestion Of A National Death Wish.

Holes Are Interesting. There Are Books About Holes.

A Writer Takes Earnest Measures To Secure His Solitude And Then Finds Endless Ways To Squander It.