Satire Is Moral Outrage Transformed Into Comic

The Only Way To Have A Funeral Is To Invite Everyone Who Ever Knew The Person And Just Wait For The Accident To Happen-somebody Who Comes In Out Of The Blue And Says The Truth. Everything Else Is Table Manners.

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.

No Matter How Much You Know, No Matter How Much You Think, No Matter How Much You Plot And You Connive And You Plan, You're Not Superior To Sex. It's A Very Risky Game.... It's Sex That Disorders Our Normally Ordered Lives.

When You Publish A Book, It's The World's Book. The World Edits It.

For Someone Whose Roots In America Were Strong But Only Inches Deep, And Who Had No Experience, Such As A Catholic Child Might, Of An Awesome Hierarchy That Was Real And Felt, Baseball Was A Kind Of Secular Church That Reached Into Every Class And Region Of The Nation And Bound Millions Upon Millions Of Us Together In Common Concerns, Loyalties, Rituals, Enthusiasms, And Antagonisms. Baseball Made Me Understand What Patriotism Was About, At Its Best.