The muttered hint, "Remember, you have a stroke here," freezes my joints like a blast from Siberia.

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.

All love is betrayal, in that it flatters life. The loveless man is best armed.

To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man.

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.

Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them.

A few places are especially conducive to inspiration - automobiles, church - public places. I plotted Couples almost entirely in church - little shivers and urgencies I would note down on the program, and carry down to the office Monday.