In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.

A photograph presents itself not only as a visual representation, but as evidence, more convincing than a painting because of the unimpeachable mechanical means whereby it was made. We do not trust the artist's flattering hand; but we do trust film, and shadows, and light.

I think it's the sentence-to-sentence pleasures, the little surprises of a surprising style of an acute style, and also the way things happen one after the other, that makes a book interesting to read page to page

All blessings are mixed blessings.

In a democracy in the 20th and 21st century, if you can't base your fiction upon ordinary people and the issues that engage them, then you are reduced to writing about spectacular unreal people. You know, James Bond or something, and you cook up adventures.

Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.

Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.