Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.

If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

We thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well being and delight.

To hell with them. Nothing hurts if you don't let it.

You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.