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.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

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

I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock.

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.

We don't simply read books. We become them.