Since films and television have staged everything imaginable before it happens, a true event, taking place in the real world, brings to mind the landscape of films.

Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires.

The greatest gift is a passion for reading.

Art is a profession, not a shrine.

The language of the younger generation has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.

Now, my novel begins. No, now I begin my novel—and yet I cannot decide whether to call myself I or she.

Making a living is nothing; the great difficulty is making a point, making a difference-with words.