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

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.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

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.

For years they have been using the role of 'sex object' as a cover while they spied out the land.

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

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.