Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.

People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.

Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter.

No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.