A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.

But what I do I do because I like to do.

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

Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through.

Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?

I don't write out of fear. I write out of a strong urge to meet death on its own eternal terms, because the fact is that if you write as little as a page of prose-even bad prose-that is eternal.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.