I believe that writing is an account of the powers of extrication.

I don't like to see all my energies, all of my youth, wasted in fur coats and radios and slipcovers.

Who reads short stories? one is asked, and I like to think that they are read by men and women in the dentist's office, waiting to be called to the chair; they are read on transcontinental plane trips instead of watching banal and vulgar films spin out the time between our coasts; they are read by discerning and well-informed men and women who seem to feel that narrative fiction can contribute to our understanding of one another and the sometimes bewildering world around us.

If there is anybody I detest, it is weak-minded sentimentalists-all those melancholy people who, out of an excess of sympathy for others, miss the thrill of their own essence and drift through life without identity, like a human fog, feeling sorry for everyone.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

Novels are about men and women and children and dogs, not politics.

Only the opium eater truly understands the pain of death.