People ... have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be friends. Sooner or later you have to talk about each other's work.

Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.

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

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.

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs.

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