Q: The relationship of your writing to money is now, I assume, beyond a sense of survival. Does it still mean anything to you? I think you should be paid for what you do. Every morning I wake up to the alarm clock, do my leg exercises, and then sit down at the word processor. By noon my back aches and I’m tired out. I work as hard or harder than I used to, so I want to be paid. But basically, at this point, it’s how you keep score.

Q: It’s now been seven years since the accident [when King was struck and critically injured by a minivan while walking in Maine]. Are you still in pain? Yes. All the time. But I don’t take anything for it anymore. I had to be hospitalized with pneumonia a couple of years ago, another operation, and after that it got to a point where I realized that I couldn’t go on taking medication forever, because I’d have to be loading it on by the boxcar. At that time I’d been taking painkillers for five years. Percocet, OxyContin, all that stuff. I was addicted. If you’re using it for pain and not using it to get high, it isn’t terribly difficult to quit. You go through withdrawal. Mostly it’s insomnia. But after a while your body says, Oh, all right!

Q: Do you still smoke cigarettes? Three a day, and never when I write. I kicked booze, Valium, cocaine. Those were all the things that I was hooked on. The only thing that I could not kick was cigarettes. Usually I have one in the morning, one at night, one in the afternoon. I do enjoy my cigarettes. And I shouldn’t. I know, I know. Smoking, bad! Health, good! But I sure do like to kick back with a good book and a cigarette. I was thinking this the other night. I came back from the ball game; the Red Sox won. And I was lying on the bed reading The Quiet American by Graham Greene. It’s a terrific, terrific book. I’m smoking a cigarette, and I’m thinking, Who’s got it better than me?

Cigarettes, all those addictive substances are part of the bad side of what we do. I think it’s part of that obsessive deal that makes you a writer in the first place, that makes you want to write it all down. Booze, cigarettes, dope.

Q: Does that mean that writing is a kind of addiction? I think it is. Even when the writing is not going well, if I don’t do it, the fact that I’m not doing it nags at me. Writing is a wonderful thing to be able to do. When it goes well, it’s fantastic, and when it doesn’t go so well, it’s only OK, but it’s still a great way to pass the time. And you have all these novels to show for it.

Q: Do you still go to AA? Yes. I try to go on a regular basis.

Q: How do you feel about the religious aspect of it? I don’t have a problem with that at all. It says in the program, if you don’t believe, pretend that you do. Fake it till you make it, they say. I follow the program. I get down on my knees in the morning and say, God help me not to think of drink and drugs. And I get down on my knees at night and say, Thank you that I didn’t have to drink or use.

Q: Now that you’ve been published in The New Yorker and been honored with a National Book Award and other international awards, it seems pretty clear that you’re taken more seriously than you were earlier in your career. Do you still feel a strong sense of exclusion from the literary establishment? It has changed a lot. You know what happens? If you have a little talent and you try to maximize it and you don’t give in or settle, then you’re taken more seriously. People who have grown up reading you become part of the literary establishment. In some ways you get a squarer shake…

The other major thing is that you get older. I’m pushing 60 now. I might have another 10 creative years left, maybe 15. I say to myself, I’ve got this amount of time, can I do something that’s even better? I don’t need the money. I don’t need another movie based on one of my books. I don’t need to write another screenplay. I don’t need another big, butt-ugly house to live in—I have this one. I’d like not to repeat myself. I’d like not to do shoddy work. But I’d like to keep working. I reject the idea that I’ve explored everything in the room.