All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self- solitude is the enemy of well- being.

I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.

I complain a lot. That's one way of coping. But I'm in a profession where nobody tells you to quit. No board of other partners tells you it's time to get your gold watch, and no physical claim is made on you like an athlete or an actress. So I try to plug along on the theory that I can still do it. I still keep trying to produce prose, and some poetry, in the hope that I can find something to say about being alive, this country, but generally the human condition.

Many men are more faithful to their golf partners than to their wives and have stuck with them longer.

Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position.

Art imitates Nature in this; not to dare is to dwindle.