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

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

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.

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

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

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.