He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal.

All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.

Whatever sympathy I feel towards religions, whatever admiration for some of their adherents, whatever historical or biological necessity I see in them, whatever metaphorical truth, I cannot accept them as credible explanations of reality; and they are incredible to me in proportion to the degree that they require my belief in positive human attributes and intervenient powers in their divinities.

The practise of an art is essential to the whole man, not because of what art is but because of what art does to the artist.

You must make, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you're going to paint. The most terrible bad form.

I don't think the English like me. I sold a colossal best seller in America, and they never really forgave me.

He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass.