A writer's business is minding other people's business ... all the vices of the village gossip are the virtues of the writer.

There is really one city for everyone just as there is one major love.

I realize more and more how instinctively pessimistic I am of all human kindness -- since I am always so bowled over by it -- and am never surprised by injustice, malice or personal attack.

All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.

A novel is like a gland pill - it nips off the cream of my hysterics and gets them running on track in a book where they belong instead of rioting all over my person.

An evening up on the Empire State roof-the strangest experience. The huge tomb in steel and glass, the ride to the 84th floor and there, under the clouds, a Hawaiian string quartet, lounge, concessions and, a thousand feet below, New York-a garden of golden lights winking on and off, automobiles, trucks winding in and out, and not a sound. All as silent as a dead city-and it looks adagio down there.

The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).