Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer.

Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

There was no immunity to cuckoo ideas on Earth.

I would have been dead if it weren't for that great gift to civilization from the Chemistry Department of Harvard, which was napalm, or sticky jellied gasoline.

A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.

Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.