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

I feel myself the inheritor of a great background of people. Just who, precisely, they were, I have never known. I might be part Negro, might be part Jew, part Muslim, part Irish. So I can't afford to be supercilious about any group of people because I may be that people.

Many people who want to be writers don't really want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print.

The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east

The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

If I were a young man, I would not hesitate at writing anything to get into print, except pornography.

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