[...] I was amazed by a gesture, a look, the expression on a face. These were moments when everything seemed to have a secret depth and it was up to me to discover it. [...]
[...] In church I'd thought I couldn't live without him, but time was passing. I continued to live. That impression of indispensability was changing. Indispensable now seemed to me not his physical presence -- I imagined him far away in Milan, happy, engaged in countless fine and useful things, rec…
IRVING: Well, yes, they’re all fathers of my work, in a way. The polite world calls them extremists, but I think they are very truthful, very accurate. I am not attracted to writers by style. What style do Dickens, Grass, and Vonnegut have in common? How silly! I am attracted to what makes them ang…
INTERVIEWER: You've been accorded from the beginning a handsome ration of prizes, awards, literary recognition of that kind. Has that had an effect on your work—given you an image you had to live in terms of?
STONE: I’ve kept my edge, stayed hungry, I think. I never sold so many copies that I go…
[...] To remain pure a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.
