Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance.

A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements - the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together.

I had spent years thinking about one thing while I was doing another. I had, in fact, prided myself on being able to do two things at once.

Twenty-five, he was. Twenty-five tomorrow. Some years the snow had melted for his birthday, but not this year, and so it had been a long winter full of cows.

The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.

it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.

There is a sociology of horses, as well as a psychology. It is most evident in the world of horse racing, where many horses are gathered together, where year after year, decade after decade, they do the same, rather simple thing - run in races and try to win.