One of the things I'm going to say out there is how grateful I am - and how grateful the world is - for the tremendous gift of the black people, of jazz.

It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show.

I had made her so unhappy that she had developed a sense of humor. [-Rabo Karabekian]

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.

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 simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.

Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.