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

Love is blind; but it makes you see the blind man; teetering on the roadside . . .

Saul Bellow says, funny enough, what French think of your work is tremendously important. And it is. It's more than what the Italians, the Spanish, and the Germans think. Somehow it's still got that cultural primacy. I feel that too: to get praised in France is better than to get praised anywhere else.

Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.

Don't dumb down; always write for your top five percent of readers.

If you feel you have a strong constituency among the young, you can really die happy, because the great unanswered question, the only valid value judgment is whether you're going to last, and that tells you that you are, for a bit at least.

Amis is acutely, vibrantly sensitive to the different registers of laughter. He knows that it can be the most affirming and uniquely human sound, and also the most sinister and animalistic one. He understands every note of every octave that separates the liberating shout of mirth from the cackle of a bully or the snigger of a sadist.