Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.

We'd been apart so long--I'd been dead so long," she said in English. "I thought surely you'd built a new life, with no room in it for me. I'd hoped that." "My life is nothing but room for you." I said. "It could never be filled by anyone but you.

That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues.

... humanity deserved to die horribly, since it had behaved so cruelly and wastefully on a planet so sweet.

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.

I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

[People] want to feel superior, so they imagine we're Bible thumpers and uneducated and all that.