My mother was a big reader, and my father was an editorial writer for a newspaper.

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

I think the Queen enjoyed my book on her father, George VI.

I really liked writing rhyming poems and plays.

My idea of a delicious time is to read a book that is wonderful. But the ruling passion of my life is being a seeker after truth and the divine.

I didn't even enter a bookshop until I was 14 because I couldn't afford books until I got my first Saturday job, but by the time I was six or seven, I spent practically every Saturday down my local...

I'm struggling with what is epic. People decided I was epic - if by epic, do you mean a big, heavy book? 'David Copperfield' is a big book - is it epic? Amount of time covered, length, drama, or story...

I think I would have written more books if I'd had fewer kids or had them earlier, but I think the books in general would have had a little less spark to them.

Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

For example, I noticed that every single kid in the high school in 'The Death-Ray' is based on somebody I went to high school with.

The poet nothing affirmeth and therefore never lieth.

For a book to function... it has to be a functioning reality. The character has to be real, and I imagine that's exactly what happens for a spy who is in deep cover.

The market for short stories is hard to break into, but a magazine editor isn't always looking for big names with which to sell his magazine - they're more willing to try stories by newcomers, if...

We're also far enough from the publishing power that we have no access to the politics of publishing, although there are interpersonal politics, of course.

You have to learn how to write each book.

The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.

I loved that it was about human relationships and then it was a mystery without falling into the trap of a thriller per se, because it pulled you in through people rather than through events or...

Here are a few of the actors who have brought my novels to TV life: Bill Pullman, Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, Julian Sands, Gena Rowlands, Rob Lowe, Julia Ormond, Chelsea Hobbs, Tate Donovan,...

Even in my most solipsistic moments, I don't regard my literary debut as a matter of global interest.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone on. I certainly don't feel I need his approval,...

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

In a general way, I want to be a kind of flag - waver, bunting hanger - up, drum - beater, you name it, for poetry.

From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.

I find a lot of poetry to be narcissistic.

Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it is not widely distributed.

Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young,...

I am a romantic, in a literary way, by which I mean the Romantic poets, who thought just because a sensation is fleeting doesn't mean it isn't valuable. If the only criterion of value is whether...

I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so I've always read poetry; I've always had a lot of different influences both linguistically and musically.