“I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.”

“A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then it’s time to go.
I tidied up the kitchenette;
I tuned the old banjo.
I’m wanted at the traffic-jam.
They’re saving me a seat.”

“A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.”

“I’m sure you’ve run into people who’ve said, “If I just had the time, I could write a book.” Everybody thinks they can write a book. And everybody’s life story could be the subject of a book — I don’t care who they are. It depends how you approach it. But writing itself, either you have it or you don’t have it. -->”

“Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book -and does”

“How often each day, if you were to verbalize your inner reality at that moment, would you have to say, “I don't want to be where I am?” What does it feel like when you don't want to be where you are–the traffic jam, your place of work, the airport lounge, the people you are with?”

“I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.”

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”

“I wrote the books I should have liked to read. That's always been my reason for writing. People won't write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself.”

“I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.”