Women want love to be a novel men a short story.

If to live is to progress if you are lucky from foolishness to wisdom then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

I was going to be a great woman novelist. Then the war came along and I think it's hard for young people today don't you to realize that when World War II happened we were dying to go and help our country.

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

The truth is I wrote a novel when I was 23. It's hideously bad. Truly rotten.

There's a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don't believe exists in any other art form as a reader I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort however flawed.

Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.