My job, and that's my job, is to dress the naked truth. To make it interesting, to make it viable, to make it seem like something you understand and feel and love.

It's who you is when folks knocks at the door of your heart what counts. Hide the past and it gives them what's jealous of you the power to bring you undone.

My job is essentially that of an entertainer, no different to that of a musician, no different to that of an actor. I just happen to be an author.

People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents.

What's the point in being an unpopular writer? It just doesn't make a lot of sense. For me it doesn't, anyway.

I was born illegitimately and almost immediately, as I understand it, placed in an orphanage. So my very earliest memories were in an orphanage. It was the tag end of the Great Depression when I was born. People were desperately poor.