The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel.

There are certain things that ordinary people have that celebrities don’t have.

If it’s not American, the French won’t go see it.

Mexico was conquered more by manipulation of myth and archetype.

The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel.

I get work because I’m primarily a novelist but I’ve become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.

I’m not gifted, but I’m not hopeless.

If I had parallel lives to pursue, I would also want one as a painter.

I never learned to read music.

As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography.

I was a precocious reader.

The world has become more complex as technology and easy travel mixes cultures without homogenizing them.

When you’re in the States and you’re a writer and you’ve got money and you walk into a bank, you’re a bum with money.

In America, if you don’t do a 100 million dollars, you’ve done nothing.

I believe that interest in heroes is universal and eternal.

I’ve always been interested in the relationship between total external surround, culture, the political matrix, technology, etc., and the internal human consciousness.

English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it’s not by design. The United States dominates because it’s the biggest market.

I write in American slang.

I must admit to being greatly influenced by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

You can really do more than you think you can do.

Is anything accidental?

It’s trite to say that the world has gotten smaller in the age of globalization, but my travels have told me that it’s wrong to think this means there is some kind of uniform world culture.