I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult.

And old Dave, he'd go up to his room, y'understand, put on his green velvet slippers - I'll never forget - and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.

It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certain age you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not?

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. And by those he has walked away from that cause him remorse.

There is unquestionably a contradiction between an efficient technological machine and the flowering of human nature, of the human personality.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

I believe in work. If somebody doesn't create something, however small it may be, he gets sick. An awful lot of people feel that they're treading water -- that if they vanished in smoke, it wouldn't mean anything at all in this world. And that's a despairing and destructive feeling. It'll kill you.