I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing. In the water I am beautiful.

What good is a planet called Earth, after all, if you own no land?

I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.

If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.

Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

What passes for culture in my head is really a bunch of commercials.