Writing Novels Is An Essentially Amateur Activity.

Vets Do What Doctors Used To - Diagnose The Injury Or The Condition, Patch It Up As Best They Can And Remind You That These Things Happen And That In Life We Are Also In The Midst Of Death.

I Suspected That There Were Things He Knew That I Had Been Waiting All My Life To Learn.

I Wrote The Dickens Book Because I Loved Dickens, Not Because I Felt A Kinship With Him, But After Writing The Book It Seemed To Me That There Was At Least One Similarity Between Us And That Was That Dickens Loved To Write And Wrote With The Ease And Conviction Of Breathing. Me, Too.

I'm A Natural Novelist. I'm Interested In The Person And The Group, And How They Mesh. And One Of The Ways I Don't Want Them To Mesh Is For The Person To Be Subsumed Into The Group.

Every Novel Deals With Social Problems. It Can't Help It Because The Protagonist Must Come In Conflict With His Group. So The Author Has To Offer An Analysis Of How The Group And The Protagonist Fit. Otherwise, The Reader Will Just Say, "this Makes No Sense," And Will Put It Away.