Things are going to go wrong, and I think we are false to life if we don’t portray it. But there is also the hope that some lucky clown is going to come along and stumble into the gold mine. And I think you are also entitled to hold out that hope.

I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.

In six pages, I can't even say "Hello.

Contrary to what people think, I slave over my books.

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.

If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.

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