History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.

I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.

I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.

For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.