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" I don't care if the audience is 600 Saul Bellows; I'm going to knock them dead with a comedy routine. I'm out there as a missionary for literature because, if people laugh and enjoy themselves, they might actually do something as bizarre as reading the book. "

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" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" Now that we all live in a bad '70s sci-fi movie, I am made to understand the tyranny of the machines every minute of every day. "

" Art saved me. It may sound corny, but it's true. "

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" Life is tragic and absurd, and none of it has any purpose at all. "

" 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. "

" I worry about everything in the world, and it's just too much for anybody to think about, so I have my art as my consolation. "

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

" Books are up against TV and movies and video games and a multimedia society that is so busy that people don't have contemplative time any more. I worry deeply about this. In fact, I worry about everything all the time. I used to be a punk. All I wanted to do was tear everything down, and that was so much easier. "

" I've always written about heroes and wondered who they are. "

" I envy Jesus because he's dead. "

" 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'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. "

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

" I think the best endings bring you back in rather than close things off with absolute finality. I'm not saying they necessarily have to be ambiguous, but we don't always need to know what happens when everyone wakes up tomorrow morning. "

" I think that's what art is about: to provoke you. It helps me make sense of a senseless universe because I become the god of the story. I create it, and I see it in all its lineaments in my own way and can control it - in a world in which everything else is out of control. "

" I think the way to be a writer is to experience things, certainly, and be open to things, but at some point to become dedicated to the craft of writing and to create a stable environment for that writing to occur in. "

" I can't read novels while I'm writing a novel, because somebody's voice creeps in. "

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

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

" I love performing in front of an audience. I like the questions; I like controversy. "

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

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

" 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 tell jokes, and I have fun, but I tend to worry about everybody and everything throughout the entire world. "

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

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