I don't know what it is that makes a writer go to his desk in his shut-off room day after day after year after year unless it is the sure knowledge that not to have done the daily stint of writing that day is infinitely more agonizing than to write.

If it's freedom you want, come to Texas. No one there tells you what to do and how you have to do it.

To be alive is a fine thing. It is the finest thing in the world, though hazardous. It is a unique thing. It happens only once in a lifetime. To be alive, to know consciously that you are alive, and to relish that knowledge -- this is a kind of magic. Or it may be a kind of madness, exhilarating but harmless.

But I have felt that to be a Jew was, in some ways at least, to be especially privileged.

Roast Beef, Medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. ... Roast Beef, Medium, is safe, and sane, and sure.

Wasn't marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded. Wasn't it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt.

A writer's working hours are his waking hours. He is working as long as he is conscious and frequently when he isn't.