I never wrote anything that was published until I was forty.

You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.

Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

When I was a child in the Navy during World War II, I was perennially grateful to the armed services libraries for having on hand a good supply of those pocket books, which were so common in that period. I must have read a couple hundred of them, and they did a lot to save my sanity.

The decent thing to do is to get rid of some of this money.

a soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor.