A concern with 'public morality' is - if not the last refuge of a scoundrel - the first foray of the fascist.

I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.

But come back in November or December, in February or March, when the fog, la nebbia, settles upon the city like a marvelous monster, and you will have little trouble believing that things can appear and disappear in this labyrinthine city, or that time here could easily slip in its sprockets and take you, willingly or unwillingly, back.

We find our calling or it finds us, and it's a sin against the fates not to use your talent when you have it.

It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper.

Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.

we write as if our lives depended upon it. They do.