The measure of artistic merit is the length to which a writer is willing to go in following his own compulsions.

The other sad truth about golf spectatorship is that for today's pros it all comes down to the putting, and that the difference between a putt that drops and one that rims the cup, though teleologically enormous, is intellectually negligeable.

The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever.

The difference between a childhood and a boyhood must be this: our childhood is what we alone have had; our boyhood is what any boy in our environment would have had.

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

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