Publishers send me a lot of first novels because my first novel was the defining novel of my career, and I guess a lot of people want my benediction or something.

I don't think I found my voice until I reached New York. I suppose it's possible I would have had some kind of different literary career if I had not discovered New York.

I envy those writers who outline their novels, who know where they're going. But I find writing is a process of discovery.

Anybody who becomes a movie star becomes successful at projecting a certain image to the public.

What a blessing that God allows a life to come through your body, and then allows you to place that body in a body bag and take it out. I had to say that there's a magnificent something that God has for me to do, to give me that level of completion. That level of experience. It's unspeakable.

I have learned that being a politician is not an easy job. My father was trying to make progress in the peace treaty with the Soviet Union. At that time, he was suffering from last-stage cancer, but he visited Moscow in the bitter cold. I learned from my father that you may have to risk your own life to make such a historic accomplishment.

Being that I went to jail and came back, I went through a whole new experience in life. I went from being at the top to back down at the bottom again. In jail, you get stripped of your freedom and everything, so I experienced different things, learned more.

Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.