Novelists have, on the average, about the same IQs as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale’s department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.

The slaves were simply turned loose without any property. They were easily recognizable. They were black. They were suddenly free to go exploring.

You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do.

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?

We're here on Earth to fart around

[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.

Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the universe has been unknown to us so far. We serve as well as we can to the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community.