I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist.

There is a neurologist, a woman over at Harvard who wanted me to come talk to them, and in France I have a lot of readers in the sciences. I can't tell you why.

I used to have this illusion that time and remote areas prepare you for the world. Our moms used to think that kind of thing. Well, it doesn't prepare you for the world at all!

Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.

I think about the sentence a long time, and then I write it. I don't revise it once it's set down.

I think the trouble with artists or chefs who whine about criticism is that if you love the good reviews, you have to at least read the bad ones.

Writers can write outside their ethnicity or sex depending how open and vulnerable they wish to be.

I admit to occasionally sharing the financial hysteria of the rest of the country, the urgency to save more for the family in case you can't write any more.

If all I did was pretend I was Wilderness Jimmy, I would go stale. You know, I fish maybe 100 days of the year and bird-hunt, but if I didn't go to Paris once or twice a year, I'd be crazy.

Given free rein, our imagination can get infinite.

I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago.

I'm a time person. It's the one discipline I manage.

There aren't any real dumb people in my voices. It's always irritated me about Hollywood dialogue - there's so much dialogue that would just bore a Ford mechanic. This is not how people talk.

I won't talk or deal with a young writer unless I sense he has utterly given his life over to it. It's a waste of my time. If they don't feel 'called' - why in God's name would you do this?

The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion.

The trajectory started when I was on the roof of our house looking out at a swamp when I was 19. I had written for several years, starting at about 15, but that day on the roof I took my vows and acknowledged my calling.

Your subconscious mind is trying to help you all the time. That's why I keep a journal - not for chatter but for mostly the images that flow into the mind or little ideas. I keep a running journal, and I have all of my life, so it's like your gold mine when you start writing.

If I can't be fishing or hunting, I want to be in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Food is a great literary theme. Food in eternity, food and sex, food and lust. Food is a part of the whole of life. Food is not separate.

I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.

When I write, I don't like to be around any humans.

So when I made some money, I didn't have any idea how one handled such a situation because no one in our family ever had any money.

Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.

I do have trouble with titles.