Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties."

(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)

The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.

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

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.

I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.

...the most beautiful things don't always make you happy - often they make you weep...