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.

The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.

The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.

Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

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