I like Sabbath's Theater very much. I haven't read it for about 10 or 12 years, and maybe when I read it again sometime, I won't like it, but I... I think I will. The energy in it is genuine. The comedy is genuine. The misanthropy is genuine. And a misanthrope can be a very funny fellow, so I learned.

[Q] While this is going on, you lived with Mickey Sabbath, I suppose. You know, you go to bed and you wake up in the night, I suppose. What's that like to live with somebody... you know, you talk about him as a finished person, which he is... you've made him. What's that... can you say anything about what it's like to live for a couple of years with somebody?

Yes. Well, you... you live with the... you invent the character and you live with the character. And the fact of the matter is that there's no one in this world you know, including yourself, as well as you know the... that character. We don't know people outside of books, of fiction, the way we know them when we either write the book of fiction or read the book of fiction. Everybody who's ever read Madame Bovary knows Madame Bovary better than they know any other woman in their life. This is the... this is the great charm and value of fiction, among others, and that is that we know in ways... the reader knows in ways he or she can't know in life.