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

In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.

Heaven's sakes, there's only one party which I call the Property Party. It's got two wings. One is called the "Republican" and one is called "Democratic." It is the same party so it makes no difference whether a Democrat's elected or a Republican's elected. The ownership remains the same.

I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.

By 1948, the Italians had begun to pull themselves together, demonstrating once more their astonishing ability to cope with disaster which is so perfectly balanced by their absolute inability to deal with success

It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.

I have no social position and I stay away from what is known as society as much as possible.