In New York the sky is bluer, and the grass is greener, and the girls are prettier, and the steaks are thicker, and the buildings are higher, and the streets are wider, and the air is finer, than the sky, or the grass, or the girls, or the steaks, or the air of any place else in the world.

A whole roomful of Jews is like a charged battery. The vitality sparks seem to fly, and frequently the result is a short circuit.

The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possible.

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.

People permit life to slide past them like a deft pickpocket, their purse-not yet missed and now too late-in his hand.

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

I never would just open a door and walk through, I had to bust it down for the hell of it. I just naturally liked doing things the hard way.