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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 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 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. "

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

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

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

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

" My job is to engage, entertain, work out my life, tell a certain truth. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" This is the beauty of fiction. We may not like these characters, but we inhabit them. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" I describe myself as an environmentalist not because I'm marching in the street with placards but because I like to be in the woods by myself. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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