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.

John Kenneth Galbraith and Marshall McLuhan are the two greatest modern Canadians that the U.S. has produced.

There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters.

When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.

It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it the perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van.

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

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room.