The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.

In most good stories, it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.

Unadaptability is often a virtue.

I don’t want any of this artificial superficial feeling stimulated by the choir. Today I have proved myself a glutton—​for Scotch oatmeal cookies and erotic thought. There is nothing left to say of me.