I write about, more or less, everything I can think of, that is I stretch my imagination as far as it'll go. I am kind of stuck in the middle as far as my life goes, and hence my imagination tends to zero in on things which are indeed in the middle. That is, I don't write about the very rich, who I scarcely know, or the very poor who I don't know very well either.

To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

New York is of course many cities, and an exile does not return to the one he left.

One of the cool, chaste countries - Canada or Sweden.

Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.