Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.

I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.

People like to re-invent you, according to cliché. There are a lot of stores about me that really apply only to Capote or Mailer or somebody else. Everything is a mish mash.

The best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino.

U.S. certainly are not warlike. We don't want that. We want to make money, which I always thought was one of the most admirable things about Americans.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.

The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.