The only writer who gives me unfeigned pleasure is P.G. Wodehouse. And even him I find a bit heavy. He takes a lot out of me. Scratching my hair, with soft whistles, with lips aquiver, I frown over Sunset at Blandings.

You can kill time in a number of ways but it always depends on the kind of time you're fighting: some time is unkillable, immortal

America still is the center of the world, and what happens in the American economy matters everywhere.

When it comes to flying, I am a nervous passenger but a confident drinker and Valium-swallower.

One of the many things I do not understand about Americans is this: what is it like to be a citizen of a superpower, to maintain democratically the means of planetary extinction. I wonder how this contributes to the dreamlife of America, a dreamlife that is so deep and troubled.

When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.

The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a character, or something you read in a paper, that seems to go off, like a solar flare inside your head.