I am sometimes visited by the heretical thought that there is no such thing as good and bad architecture, any more than there is good and bad nature. It is all in where you stand at the time.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. Mark Twain Women are an alien race set down among us.

The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow.

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.

Being a divorcee in a small town is a little like playing Monopoly; eventually you land on all the properties.