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

A novel must be a rich forest known at the start only by instinct.

A capacity for going overboard is a requisite for a full-grown mind.

Hold fast to whatever fragments of love that exist, for sometimes a mosaic is more beautiful than an unbroken pattern.

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.

I cannot exist without the oxygen of laughter.

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.