No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.

I have only one bit of advice to beginning writers: be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

I don’t know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss...

The extreme geniality of San Francisco's economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

As a younger man I wrote for eight years without ever earning a nickel which is a long apprenticeship, but in that time I learned a lot about my trade.