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" 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. "

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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 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. "

" I've never really been met with indifference, where they say, 'Who cares?' I think that's what good art is supposed to do. It's not supposed to make you feel good about your own prejudices and your own values; it's supposed to open you up in some way and get you outraged or make you happy or make you sad or whatever it's going to do. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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'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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 envy Jesus because he's dead. "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" One of the reasons I've been able to be productive is that I want to do everything. "