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

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.

The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.

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.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.

There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.