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

Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live. There is in men, as Peter Quennell said, "a centrifugal tendency." In our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation.

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.

The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. Lovers, even book lovers, tend to cling. No one-night stands or "reads" for them.

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

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

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.