It was the ponderous battering ram of his novels that opened the way through the genteel reticences of American nineteenth-century fiction. . . Without [Theodore] Dreiser's treading out a path for naturalism none of us would have had a chance to publish.

The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs

Curiosity urges you on-driving force.

Women is fine once you got em pinned down, boss, but when they ain't pinned down they're hell.

People do not choose a career; the career envelopes them.

Anything that happens to you has some bearing upon what you write.

Why won't they let a year die without bringing in a new one on the instant, can't they use birth control on time? I want an interregnum. The stupid years patter on with unrelenting feet, never stopping - rising to little monotonous peaks in our imaginations at festivals like New Year's and Easter and Christmas - But, goodness, why need they do it?