Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.

The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.

The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art.

The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

Indianapolis, Indiana is the first place in the United States of America where a white man was hanged for the murder of an Indian. The kind of people who'll hang a white man for murdering an Indian--that's the kind of people for me.

He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next

For a Russian to be chivalrous with an American is a spiritual impossibility, a conradiction in terms.