The first breathe of adultery is the freest.

If you're telling me I'm not mature, that's one thing I don't cry over since as far as I can make out it's the same thing as being dead.

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

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

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.

Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling in your ear.

There's always something new by looking at the same thing over and over.