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.

It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.

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.

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.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.

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.