Novels, except as aids to masturbation, play no part in contemporary life.

Plots are no more exhausted than men are. Every man is a new creation, and combinations are simply endless.

All fiction for me is a kind of magic and trickery-a confidence trick, trying to make people believe something is true that isn't.

Fiction is like a spiders web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

Fiction is not a dream. Nor is it guesswork. It is imagining based on facts, and the facts must be accurate or the work of imagining will not stand up.

The truth is, we've not really developed a fiction that can accommodate the full tumult, the zaniness and crazed quality of modern experience.

Fiction may be said to be the caricature of history.

All novels are experimental.

My novels point out that the world consists entirely of exceptions.

With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow.