Art is the triumph over chaos.

To be an American and unable to play baseball is comparable to being a Polynesian and unable to swim.

Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

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

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.

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