Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.

She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.

I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.

A lot of novelists start late-Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.

The hand that holds the money cracks the whip.

If you can't write like New York, you have no business living in New York and making New York the locale of your stories.

A guitar has moonlight in it.