As a kid, I dreamt of becoming a writer. My most exciting pastime was reading novels; in fact, I would read anything I could find.
I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.
If writing a novel is a year's exile to a foreign country, writing a short story is a weekend spent somewhere exotic. They're much more like vacations, more exciting and different, and you're off.
I speak English and Spanish. I write in Spanish; my books are published in English.
A lot of first novels are written long before they're actually put down on paper.
Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera - or an NHL game.
Even Shakespeare gives you a scene off.
When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that human beings wrote books. It was a kind of cognitive dissonance for me... I just didn't think it was something that people did.
When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
Books are like eggs -- best when fresh.
I adore anything Michael Alexis writes.
Few people have written significant books about San Francisco. Robert Duncan was, in my opinion, often in the clouds. If he walked the streets a lot he didn't write about as such.
Eight was about the age I was when I realized that people actually produced books, they didn't just spring out of the library shelves.
Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.
People have been writing songs and poems since the time we had brains.
There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind.
Two of my favourite books are Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' and 'Tropic of Capricorn.'
I spend about a year between novels.
I will write a couple of books and become a millionaire.
I disagree with everything John Updike has ever said.
As part of my research for An Anthology of Authors' Atrocity Stories About Publishers, I conducted a study (employing my usual controls) that showed the average shelf life of a trade book to be somewhere between milk and yoghurt.
There are so many stories to be told, by so many good writers.
I used to read only fiction. Now I don't read much, only occasionally, such as a Cormac McCarthy or a Jim Harrison novel.
There is a quiet place in Hawaii where, for over thirty years, I've gone to draw inspiration and write many of my books.
I've always been a writer. I hope to continue to write books until I can't anymore.
