I'm always reading books-as many as there are. I ration myself on them so that I'll always be in supply.

The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.

Let’s not talk about how I am. It’s a subject I know too much about to want to think about anymore.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.