Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

How important my books are or anybody's books are, I don't know. I don't think they are terribly important I think that they make people contented during the period they are reading them and this is worth something is to take care of somebody for a couple of hours.

Of course, socialism is just evil now. It's completely discredited supposedly by the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can't help noticing that my grandchildren are heavily in hock to Communist China now which is evidently a whole lot better at business than we are.

I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer." "What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?

Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgment Day: We never asked to be born in the first place.

You say what you have to say. But you have to learn to say it in such a way that the reader can see what you mean.

Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.