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

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)

You know, people think you have to be dumb to skip rope for 45 minutes. No, you have to be able to imagine something else. While you're skipping rope, you have to be able to see something else.

Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls.

Anybody can do research. The plotting of the novel, writing the ending before you write anything else, which I always do - I don't know that everybody can do that. That's the hard part.

If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.