The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.