Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world.

It takes a sour woman to make a good pickle.

I was a big comics reader when I was a kid, from about six to fifteen. I collected them, I read them, I even created my own characters in comics.

The city was new again, and newly dangerous, and I would walk the streets quickly, eyes averted from those of passersby, like a spy in the employ of lust and happiness, carrying the secret deep...

It was the beginning of youth culture and pandering to youth culture, … In that, the comic book publishers were definitely pioneers.

Moby Dick – that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed; that’s how my book begins, too, but I hadn’t noticed the parallel before, two characters...

There’s nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.

Take care-there is no force more powerful than that of an unbridled imagination.

Comic books were just the means for me to tell the story.

this one-way rocket to Death in Adulthood” “Normal Time” in New California Writing

I HAD known him as a bulldozer, as a samurai, as an android programmed to kill, as Plastic Man and Titanium Man and Matter-Eater Lad, as a Buick Electra, as a Peterbilt truck, and even,...

From his corner office on the ground floor of the St. Cyril station house, Inspector Dick has a fine view of the parking lot. Six Dumpsters plated and hooped like iron maidens against bears. Beyond...

I was surprised that my wife thought it was a good idea, then again with my agent, another woman, then my editor, another woman – in spite of the fact that all three of them...

His body had almost no hair and his naked little circumcised johnson was nearly as pale as the rest of him, white as a boy’s – perhaps over time one’s genitals emerge from the pots...

It’s very difficult to fail at pornography

People keep saying, ‘Oh, you’re getting all these great reviews, that must make you really happy.’ I guess it does, but mostly it’s just a relief.

The whole house seemed to exhale a melancholy breath of emptiness

A mere redrawing of borders, a change in governments, those things can never faze a Jewess with a good supply of hand wipes in her bag.

Every time another review comes out I let out a deep breath.

The winter drove them mad. It drove every man mad who had ever lived through it; there was only ever the question of degree. The sun disappeared, and you could not leave the tunnels, and...

Other than along certain emotional tangents there was little in the book that felt as if it had actually been lived. It was a fiction produced by someone who knew only fictions, The Tempest as...

It was him, thirty years too old, twenty pounds too light, & forty watts too dim maybe, but him.

I was thinking, too, of Superman and his fortress of solitude.

Love great first lines and paragraphs. From The Yiddish Policemen’s Union:Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a...

It feels a little scary for most writers because when you’re writing, you’re completely in charge you can say this book is all mine, it’s my world. Whether giving over some of that has any...

So it was scary, but that’s how it goes. To my great delight, I discovered that it did all belong.

Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth when the truth matters most...

The baby, not too young to start knowing the ledge, the cold truth, the life-and-death facts of it all. ‘What kind of heaven is that, you can’t have your records?’ The baby, understanding perhaps it...

Having chosen to set the book during this period, from the first day I was writing, I knew I was going to have to do something about World War Two.

Although it wasn’t raining anymore, the air was still heavy with water, and rain gutters were ringing all over Point Breeze.

I don’t care what is written,” Meyer Landsman says. “I don’t care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son’s throat...

He felt, and not for the first time today, that he had not made a good decision in his personal or professional life since 1989.

I wasn’t involved, except to the degree that they sent me drafts of the script as the writer turned them in. They asked me at one point to write a memo about what I thought...

I was conscious, then, of a different ache, deeper and more sharp than the feeling of bereavement that a hangover will sometimes uncover in the heart.

The winning names were not even remotely names I would have chosen or invented.

That was all very nice of them. They didn’t have to do anything because I wasn’t officially involved at all.

I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary part of writing fiction but as virtual guarantor, insofar as such a thing...

One of the fundamental axioms of masculine self-regard is that the tools and appurtenances of a man’s life must be containable within the pockets of his jacket and pants. Wallet, keys, gum, show or ball...

He comes to this other world and he has to reinvent himself. Again, it felt natural, even though I’d been working really hard trying to come up with something.

But then, staring at the label on one crate, which readSWORD-CANE-DLUBECK SHOE TREE-HORASUITS (3)-HORAASSORTED HANDKERCHIEFS (6)-HORAJosef felt a bloom of dread in his belly, and all at once he was certain that it was not...

All at once he feels weary of ganefs and prophets, guns and sacrifices and the infinite gangster weight of God. He’s tired of hearing about the promised land and the inevitable bloodshed required for its...

A smile opened, thin as a paper cut, in the bottom of Flowers’s face.

I’m such a devoted web user, myself, that it feels important to me to have a presence, to be a part of that whole collective enterprise.

It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That’s what a family is. Also the...

the right not to use the name if it is offensive, mischievous, ill-intentioned or inappropriate.

That’s the best thing about writing, when you’re in that zone, you’re porous, ready to absorb the solution.

Mendel had a remarkable nature as a boy. I’m not talking about miracles. Miracles are a burden for a tzaddik, not the proof of one. Miracles prove nothing except to those whose faith is bought...

Bina, thank you. Bina, listen, this guy. His name wasn’t Lasker. This guy-‘She puts a hand to his mouth. She has not touched him in three years. It probably would be too much to say...

I completely lost interest in comics. I sold my collection. I didn’t go back to them for fifteen years – until after Wonder Boys.

This song always kills me, I said. She sighed, and then gave up. Why? Oh, I don’t know. It makes me feel nostalgia for a time I never even knew. I wasn’t even alive. That’s...