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" As humans, we all want our own island. Of course, the truth is, we're never going to get it. "

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" I am mad for nature writing. I want to get inside the head of every creature in the world, even ants. "

" Look at Sam Beckett. Most depressed man who ever lived, but he sure was funny. "

" What higher art does is to invite us in and allow us to make decisions. "

" This is why fiction is an art, and life is not - how much more affecting is the lie than the truth. "

" I hope to stay light on my feet, to work in many modes, to seek inspiration always, and avoid the fatal. But, as we all know, it is the price of life to burn out, both metaphorically and literally. "

" I read widely - for news, the arts, science, for entertainment, and the value of being informed - and, as a fiction writer, I can't help transposing what I learn into the scenario for a novel or story. "

" I think, if I'm doing my job correctly, I'm presenting a scenario for you as the reader to engage with on your own. I mean, that's what the best art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to be political. I think if you read all my books, you know where I stand, pretty much. "

" I like to live in my own mind, regardless of everyone and everything, working out the intimate puzzles that are my stories and novels. "

" The compulsively readable events of my life occurred mainly in infancy, and it's been pretty humdrum ever since. "

" I never go anywhere without a book for fear of being stuck in line in front of the theater or strapped down in the dentist's chair and being bored witless. Thus, I read everywhere. "

" Sometimes if something is entertaining and amusing, people tend to think that it doesn't have the depth of something that's dramatic. I don't think that's true. "

" It's hard to say how certain stories just punch us in the heart and the brain at the same time at the end. I suppose that's what we're all looking for. But each story has its own valence, its own way of saying goodbye to you. "

" I do not want to repeat myself. I want to reach for something I've never attained. This is the excitement of art. "

" I'm just kind of fascinated by how we can deny that we are animals and what our impact on the other animals is like, and how quixotic we can be in trying to assess what we've done in trying to correct it. "

" I'm enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else. "

" Every story is organic, and every story finds its own ending. "

" Sometimes, we find common ground; more often, we don't. "

" It's just my natural way - to be funny. I don't know why that is. But as I've said, humor is a quick cover for shock, horror, confusion. The critics hate funny writers for the most part. They think funny is not serious, but I think that funny can be even more serious than nonfunny. And it can be more affecting, too. "

" I can't fathom writers married to writers and musicians married to musicians. There's your enemy in bed beside you. "

" I am a worrier. I worry about the state of our country, of the world, of our species. Every day seems to deliver a new nail to hammer into our collective coffin. "

" I really like the power of stopping the laughter and turning it to horror. "

" Science has killed religion. There's no hope for the future with seven billion of us on the planet, and the only thing you can do is to laugh in the face of it all. "

" In previous generations, there was purpose; you had to die, but there was God, and literature and culture would go on. Now, there is no God, and our species is imminently doomed, so there is no purpose. We get up, raise families, have bank accounts, fix our teeth and everything else. But really, there is utterly no purpose except to be alive. "

" The beauty of American law is you cannot slander anybody who is dead. This is not true in all countries. "

" What is your identity, and how do you know who you are if you don't have language? "

" Of course all novelists are egomaniacs and want to draw everyone to their fold just like any other preacher. The snake-oil peddler, the false prophet, all of this is fascinating to me. But I certainly hope that I'm more humane than that. "

" If we lose sight of the fact that writing is entertainment, then writing is doomed. "

" I envy Jesus because he's dead. "

" It's true that none of my characters are admirable. But maybe I'm primarily a satirist, and a satirist needs to hold up what's not admirable. "

" The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced. "