The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable.

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.

The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity.

Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough?

But that’s one advantage of fiction, you can speed up time.

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.