I Don’t Ask Writers About Their Work

At A Certain Stage Of Misery, You'll Try Anything To Explain What's Going On With You, Even If You Know It Doesn't Explain A Thing And It's One Failed Explanation After Another.

Everybody Who Flashed The Signs Of Loyalty He Took To Be Loyal. Everybody Who Flashed The Signs Of Intelligence He Took To Be Intelligent. And So He Had Failed To See Into His Daughter, Failed To See Into His Wife, Failed To See Into His One And Only Mistress—probably Had Never Even Begun To See Into Himself

The Thought Of The Novelist Lies Not In The Remarks Of His Characters Or Even In Their Introspection But In The Plight He Has Invented For His Characters - In The Juxtaposition Of Those Characters And In The Lifelike Ramifications Of The Ensemble They Make: Their Density, Their Substantiality, Their Lived Existence Actualized In All Its Nuanced Particulars, Is In Fact His Thought Metabolized.

How Easy Life Is When It's Easy, And How Hard When It's Hard.

You Asked If I Thought My Fiction Had Changed Anything In The Culture And The Answer Is No. Sure, There's Been Some Scandal, But People Are Scandalized All The Time; It's A Way Of Life For Them. It Doesn't Mean A Thing. If You Ask If I Want My Fiction To Change Anything In The Culture, The Answer Is Still No. What I Want Is To Possess My Readers While They Are Reading My Book — If I Can, To Possess Them In Ways That Other Writers Don't. Then Let Them Return, Just As They Were, To A World Where Everybody Else Is Working To Change, Persuade, Tempt, And Control Them.