Atrocity is truly emperor; All things that thrive are slaves of cruel Creation.

A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow.

I like old men. They can be wonderful bastards because they have nothing to lose. The only people who can be themselves are babies and old bastards.

I'm always looking for insights into the real Doris Day because I'm stuck with this infatuation and need to explain it to myself.

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

There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.