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" Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. "

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" I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. Maybe that says something about bookstore clerks. "

" To have the regard of one's peers is immensely moving. "

" Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially. "

" When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you. "

" When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it. "

" I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer. "

" History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth. "

" Here's how it goes: I'm up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have breakfast and read the papers, and then it's lunchtime. Then maybe a little nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it's time to have a drink. "

" We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy. "

" When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences. "

" I get intrigued by a first lin and I write to find out why it means something to me. You make discoveries just the way the reader does, so you're simultaneously the writer and the reader. "

" My theory about why Hemingway killed himself is that he heard his own voice; that he reached the point where he couldn't write without feeling he was repeating himself. That's the worst thing that can happen to a writer. "

" My father was the proprietor of a music shop on Forty-third Street, where many of the finest performers and musicians of the day would come to shop. He knew the classical repertoire inside out. "

" Each book tends to have its own identity rather than the author's. It speaks from itself rather than you. Each book is unlike the others because you are not bringing the same voice to every book. I think that keeps you alive as a writer. "

" One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing. "

" From my undergraduate days, I've always been interested in the major philosophical questions that don't seem to have an answer that everyone agrees on. "

" Movies are too literal. "

" I started on computers with 'Billy Bathgate,' a little orange screen with black letters. I thought it was really cool, but it actually slowed me up for a while because it's so easy to revise, I tended to stay on the same page. I've learned to discipline myself. "

" Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice. "

" I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad. "

" The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity. "

" The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like. "

" I don't think anything I've written has been done in under six or eight drafts. Usually it takes me a few years to write a book. 'World's Fair' was an exception. It seemed to be a particularly fluent book as it came. I did it in seven months. I think what happened in that case is that God gave me a bonus book. "

" Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. "

" Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. "

" I'm not the sort of writer who can walk into a party and take a look around, see who's sleeping with whom and go home and write a novel about society. It's not the way I work. "

" Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. "

" Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. "

" The important thing is not to be too comfortable when you're writing. Noise in the street? That's good. The computer goes down? That's good. All these things are good. It has to be a little bit of a struggle. "

" In fiction, you know, there are no borders. You can go anywhere. "