Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.

In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.

I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.