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.

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.

Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety.

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.

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

A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.

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