When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.

What were you going to do tonight?" "I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff." "Who's that?" "A dead Russian.

Most people are not ready for death, theirs or anybody elses.

For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter.

The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he knows where to find us and how--usually in the bath or in sexual intercourse or asleep.

An early taste of death is not necessarily a bad thing.

take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning