One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own.

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.

A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.

The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.