Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.

I'm a fisherman who likes to observe and tell yarns, and so I told stories about things that I knew about.

Oh little Cody Pomeray if there had been some way to send a cry to you even when you were too little to know what utterances and cries are for in this dark sad earth, with your terrors in a world so malign and inhospitable, and all the insults from heaven ramming down to crowd your head with anger, pain, disgrace, worst of all the crapulous poverty in and out of every splintered door of days, if someone could have said to you then, and made you perceive, "Fear life, but don't die; you're alone, everybody's alone. Oh Cody Pomeray, you can't win, you can't lose, all is ephemeral, all is hurt."

Pain or love or danger makes you real again....

My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.