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

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written

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

When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.