My country is in ruins. So I'm a fish in a poisoned fishbowl. I'm mostly just heartsick about this. There should have been hope. This should have been a great country. But we are despised all over the world now. I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books.

If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think you do.

Don't worry about your father. He's a perfectly contented, self-sufficient zombie.

Pretend to be good always and even God will be fooled.

The crowd, having been promised nothing, felt cheated, having received nothing.

There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.

I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior; if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.