A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.

Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.

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.

Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House

You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer

I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans