I like men who have known the best and the worst, whose life has been anything but a smooth trip. Storms have battered them, they have lain, sometimes for months on end, becalmed. There is a residue even if they fail. It has not been all tinkling; there have been grand chords.

I like to write about certain things that if they are not written about are not going to exist.

Happiness is often at its most intense when it is based on inequality.

Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.

You would have to be very optimistic to think that any of your books will be among the books that survive in the very long run. I think if a writer is lucky enough to still have a few books around after he's gone, a few that are still being read, then he's accomplished quite a lot.

We were moderate, we will never know what it is to spill out our lives.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.