He knows so little and knows it so fluently.

Like all born politicians, their eye was for the main chance rather than for the argument, and they found it easier to forswear a conviction than to forego a comfort.

I had no place in any coterie, or in any reciprocal self-advertising. I stood alone. I stood outside. I wanted only to learn. I wanted only to write better.

Though it sounds absurd, it is true to say I felt younger at sixty than I felt at twenty.

I ain't never seen no head so level that it could bear the lettin' in of politics.

For me, the novel is experience illumined by imagination.

Preserve, within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reverie.