Reviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist.

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.

Put it off for a bit. All life is putting off. Well, not entirely.

Ignorance and poverty are the best condiments for the great feast of the world, but the inexperienced and poor are never invited to it.

It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now.

Come with uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones...you are invited!

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.