Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.

A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.

It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'

Life is a tragedy full of joy.

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer - he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.

I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

You see in others who you are.