A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he's supposed to be doing.

Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.

That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.

Immortality makes sense only when the individual soul can be thought of as merging into a great collective mush of sainthood. If we take anything with us into the next world, it is not what survives in the memories of our relicts.

Literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing.

As we grow older, the memories of early life brighten, those of maturity and senescence grow dim and confused.

The practice of fiction can be dangerous: it puts ideas into the head of the world.