I was here on earth because I chose to be.

Good writers are often excellent at a hundred other things, but writing promises a greater latitude for the ego.

There isn't a king or a merchant prince in the whole world that I envy, for I always knew I was born to be a child of destiny and that I was never meant to wring my living from detestable, low, degrading, mean and ordinary kinds of business.

The main emotion of the adult American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

Never eat a heavily sugared doughnut before you go on TV.

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.