Admite the world. Relish the love of a gentle woman. Trust in the lord.

The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings.

The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable.

For these are not as they might seem to be, the ruins of our civilization, but are temporary encampment and outposts of the civilization that we - you and I - shall build.

The irony of Christmas is always upon the poor in heart; the mystery of the solstice is always upon the rest of us.

The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.

For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.