A nonreader is somebody standing there in a blindfold.

This was not some pretty little girl, coyly flirtatious, delicately stimulated. This was the mature female of the species, vivid, handsome and strong demanding that all the life within her be matched. Her instinct would detect any hedging, any dishonesty, any less than complete response to her - and then she would be gone for good.

A man with a credit card is in hock to his own image of himself.

If you would be thrilled by watching the galloping advance of a major glacier, you'd be ecstatic watching changes in publishing.

I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.

Night and gin and music-the right setting for peeling off the thin clinging layers of bullshit and finding one's way down closer to the essential self.

The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.