You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it.

That is simply the most beautiful publishing office in the world, with that cranky old building in that wonderful park.

We are all naturally xenophobic.

That's my only defense against this world: to build a sentence out of it.

I have closely noted that people who watch a great deal of TV never again seem able to adjust to the actual pace of life. The speed of the passing images becomes the speed the aspire to and they seem to develop an impatience and boredom with anything else.

New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed.

I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.