[Norman Mailer] is against masturbation, he's against homosexuality. He believes that murder is essentially sexual. I think he's rather an anthology of all the darkest American traits.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.

Despite the warnings of other times, the impetuous and the confident continue their indiscriminate cultivation of weeds at the expense of occasional flowers.

Baum (Writer of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ) was a true educator, and those who read his Oz books are often made what they were not-imaginative , tolerant, alert to wonders, life.

Between Malraux, Balzac, and Montaigne, I choose Montaigne. Montaigne will survive all the others, because the essay, meaning direct communication between the writer and his reader, will outlast the novel, by at least a thousand years.

What we are is seldom what we want to be, while what we want to be is either denied us or changes with the seasons.