Women are an alien race set down among us.

Laws aren't ghosts in this country, they walk around with the smell of earth on them.

American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism.

I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

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

The heart prefers to move against the grain of circumstance; perversity is the souls very life.

My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me-to give the mundane its beautiful due.