Quote

I've never felt powerful enough to write a true political novel, or deeply knowledgeable enough to draw a character like, say, Tolstoy's Prince Kutuzov.

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.

I don't see that books can be written without political context - not if they're relevant and ambitious.

It makes me nuts, the idea that if you put a political struggle at the heart of your book, then it has to be that the author - me - is trying in some way to push my views onto my readers.

The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all - in the end the vast majority of them simply aren't that great, and are destined to be forgotten.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

I can't envision an honest war novel that left war in a positive light.

I don't believe there can be a poetic novel without political consciousness. I have a strong political conscience.