A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.

The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.

I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.

I know that the history of man is not his technical triumphs, his kills, his victories. It is a composite, a mosaic of a trillion pieces, the account of each man's accommodation with his conscience. This is the true history of the race.

It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.

There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was.