Nowadays most people wear black most of the time anyway: go to a literary party and one would imagine everyone there was in perpetual mourning for their lives.

Novelists... fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence.

It is easier for the reader to judge, by a thousand times, than for the writer to invent. The writer must summon his Idea out of nowhere, and his characters out of nothing, and catch words as they fly, and nail them to the page. The reader has something to go by and somewhere to start from, given to him freely and with great generosity by the writer. And still the reader feels free to find fault.

Never defend yourself; agree with your critics, it takes the wind out of their sails.

Writers are always a great nuisance to publishers. If they could do without them, they would.

My experience of men in cars has always been that if you don't want them to do something, they will. It is when they are behind a wheel that they most fear the control of women and children.

memory is so selective; wishful thinking presses it into service all the time.