A Murderer Was A Worthy Companion.

If I'm Reading Something I Happen To Know And Gets It Wrong, I Just Don't Trust The Book Any More. What I Ask Of A Novel I'm Reading Is That It Should Know A Fraction More About The Things I Know Than I Do. When I'm Writing...i Ask Myself: Would I Be Convinced By This If I Read It? If I Knocked Against This Bit Of Scenery, Would It Feel Solid?

Thou Shalt Not Is Soon Forgotten, But Once Upon A Time Is Forever.

Everyone, From The Mother Superior To The Priests To My Parents--they Were So Upset And Reproachful...i Felt As If Something They All Passionately Believed In Depended On Me Carrying On With Something I Didn't.

I Don't Expect Christians To See God As A Metaphor, But That's What He Is. Perhaps It Might Be Clearer To Call Him A Character In Fiction, And A Very Interesting One Too: One Of The Greatest And Most Complex Villains Of All - Savage, Petty, Boastful And Jealous, And Yet Capable Of Moments Of Tenderness And Extremes Of Arbitrary Affection - For David, For Example. But He's Not Real, Any More Than Hamlet Or Mr Pickwick Are Real. They Are Real In The Context Of Their Stories, But You Won't Find Them In The Phone Book.

I Practiced On The Greatest Model Of Storytelling We've Got, Which Is "the Iliad" And "the Odyssey." I Told Those Stories Many, Many Times.