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" When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed. "

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" I don't read anything electronically. I don't write electronically, either - except e-mails to my family and friends. I write in longhand. I have always written first drafts by hand, but I used to write subsequent drafts and insert pages on a typewriter. "

" I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin. "

" I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through. "

" To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense. "

" You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one. "

" With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes. "

" I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write. "

" Of all the things you choose in life, you don't get to choose what your nightmares are. You don't pick them; they pick you. "

" Good habits are worth being fanatical about. "

" I never wanted my kids to feel I was more interested in anything I was doing than I was in them. "

" I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with. "

" I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey. "

" There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep. "

" I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there. "

" As many times as I've seen 'The Merchant of Venice,' I always take Shylock's side. For all the hatred that guy is shown, he has a reason to hate in return. He's treated cruelly. And it's tragic that he learns to be intolerant because of what others do to him. "

" I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things being one day here and the next day not; a sense anything could happen. Then, all of a sudden, my mother met my stepfather, and her life became happier, and my life changed, my name changed. "

" If you're still wondering about details - how am I going to get these two to meet, or whatever - when you're writing, you can't pay proper attention to the sentences themselves. "

" I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions. "

" You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. "

" I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described. "

" I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography. "

" I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have. "

" When I feel like being a director, I write a novel. "

" I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination. "

" I get up early. I like to read a little before anyone but the dog is up. I also like to read at night, not in bed but just before I go to bed. "

" If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it. "

" I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful. I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs. "

" And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you. "

" The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of. "

" There's no reason you should write any novel quickly. "