I'm Not A Reader Of

It Would Be The Death Of All Creativity For Me If I Had To Sit There And Be Concerned With The Sensibilities Of A Fourteen-year-old Kid. Some Fourteen-year-olds Would Revel In The Book, And Some Would Be Very Sensitive To It, So You Can't Afford To Worry About That. What I Worry About Is Good Taste And Getting My Message Across By Whatever Means I Can.

I Read A Lot Of Detective Stories Because They Always Deliver. They Give You A Beginning, A Middle, And An End - A Resolution. The Modern Novels I Read Don't Always Deliver Because I'm Looking Essentially For A Story. As In Shakespeare, "the Play's The Thing." In Particular I Read Detective Stories For Pacing, Plot And Suspense.

I'm Not A Reader Of Young Adult Fiction For The Simple Reason That These Novelists Are Writing For Adolescents, So They Are Not Writing For Me.

I'm Always Telling Myself As I Write That I'm Not Really Writing A Novel; I'm Just Going To Fool Around With A Character Or An Idea.

I Am Frightened By Today's World, Terrified By It. I Think That Comes Out In The Books. I'm Afraid Of Big Things. Some Of These Schools Have Three Thousand Kids, And Even The Size Of The Schools Frightens Me. Big Government Frightens Me; So Does Big Defense.