For the kind of places I've written for and the kind of writing that I've done, the general way to think about your audience is to think about somebody who's like yourself, but in a completely different discipline.

You want diversity in any intellectual organization. I mean, that's how good ideas arise.

The short story is not as restrictive as the sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. ...at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated.

The way universities operate is the decision about what students need for the degree are... is the decision made by the faculty.

It's very hard to know who your readers are, but that's who I'm... if I have somebody in my head, that's probably who it is.

Quotable quotes are coins rubbed smooth by circulation.

Diminished circumstances had no effect on his sense of what was honorable: after The Spectator sent him a check for a piece it had accepted but was unable to run for a lack of space, he refused to write for the magazine again.