We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.

Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.

Narrative and metaphysics alike become flimsy and frivolous if they venture too far from the home base of all humanism - the single, simple human life that we all more or less lead, with its crude elementals of nurture and appetite, love and competition, the sunshine of well-being and the inevitable night of death. We each live this tale. Fiction has no reason to be embarrassed about telling the same story again and again, since we all, with infinite variations, experience the same story.

Of nothing but me I sing, lacking another song.

I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish.

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

I'm not against TV; I don't go on the morning talk shows because I'm not invited. If I was, I might go.