[ New York ] is a place that worships incompetence particularly if it's combined with energy and paranoid self-confidence. Only in a city like New York could Truman Capote have made it, or John Simon.

When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'

Americans worship the Constitution but do not observe it.

I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity.

I keep as far from children as possible. I don't like the size of them; the scale is all wrong. The head tends to be too big for the bodies and the hands and feet are a disaster and they keep falling into things, and the nakedness of their bad character.

In large Victorian houses with many rooms and heavy doors, the occupants could be mysterious and exciting to one another in a way that those who live in rackety developments can never hope to be. Not even the lust of a Lord Byron could survive the fact of Levittown.

You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?