We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.

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.

The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.

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.

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