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.

Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth.

The writer is a writer because he cannot help it. It is a compulsion.

About mistakes it's funny. You got to make your own; and not only that, if you try to keep people from making theirs they get mad.

Bizarre as was the name she bore, Kim Ravenal always said she was thankful it had been no worse.

But almost any place is Baghdad if you don't know what will happen in it.

Your idea of bliss is to wake up on a Monday morning knowing you haven't a single engagement for the entire week. You are cradled in a white paper cocoon tied up with typewriter ribbon.