Boxing is rough. Even if you win, you get hurt.
A writer’s life is in his work, and that is the place to find him.
Self-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practice.
I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I’ve written.
I really love to set things in places that are real to me.
It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.
Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.
Can compromise be an art? Yes – but a minor art.
I think whenever we think of our hometowns, we tend to think of very specific people: with whom you rode on the school bus, who was your next door neighbor you were playing with, who your girlfriend was. It’s always something very specific.
Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and abiding.
After my parents passed away – in 2000 and 2003 – I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.
A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It’s deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn’t stop you feeling it.
Except that awards are competitive, which is a negative thing, they are wonderful for singling out deserving individuals and bringing their work to the attention of many potential readers who might otherwise have been totally unaware of them.
To be knocked out doesn’t mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up.
To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you’re not aware of that when you’re a child, the whole tradition is lost.
The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.
The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency.
The – the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.
Productivity is a relative matter. And it’s really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer’s strongest books.
As soon as I moved to Princeton in 1978, I became fascinated by local history, much of it Revolutionary War-era; and I became fascinated by the presidency of Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University.