Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.

Of comic novels that have quaffed the elixir of 'classic': Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.

literature is an instrument of a culture, not a summary of it.

We are so placid that the smallest tremor of objection is taken as a full-scale revolution.

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.

I was so mad at my agent. I had polished and polished and polished [the play], and he referred to it as a draft. I wrote him a bitter letter: How can you call this a draft? I don't do drafts! By now I've done 18, and its turning, in the rehearsal room, into a 19th.