My mother had been educated at a convent, and she had been converted to communism by my father during Stalin's most rampant period, at the beginning of the 1930s. So she had two gods, God in heaven and god on earth.

I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter

I am a writer of fragments.

Cigars must be smoked one at a time, peaceably, with all the leisure in the world. Cigarettes are of the instant, Cigars are for eternity.

For me, words are just words, nothing else

I am against the notion of style in itself