I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.

If you're old and you're healthy and you're active - I don't mean you have to be politically active - if you remain interested in other people and the world, then you live as well as your health will allow.

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

Write from what you know into what you don't know.

…I go through a story for lies. I might discover the lie of trying to show off. Sometimes they’re lies of character. Sometimes they are lies of writing the most beautiful sentence in the world that has nothing to do with the story.

You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.

Well, by now you must know yourself, honey, whatever you do, life don't stop. It only sits a minute and dreams a dream.