I picked up 'On Moral Fiction' in the bookstore and looked up myself in the index, but I didn't read it through. I try not to read things that depress me.

I didn't need to write historical epics, no, or science fiction, though I read a lot of science fiction as a kid and rather liked it. But I didn't have the mentality.

A bookstore to me is ike a candy store, ... There is not a book I would not want to read at some point. My son is learning to read right now. Watching him get excited how he can discover things through books is pretty phenomenal.

I picked up a harmonica and taught myself.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.