One does not go to Moscow to get fat.

Fiction is in danger of becoming a kind of poetry. Only other poets read it. Only other fiction writers care about it.

Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago.

In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it.

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

Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.