Novelists tend to go off at 70, and I'm in a funk about it, I've got myself into a real paranoid funk about it, how the talent dies before the body.

Everyone is right up there at the very brink of their pain limit.

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

I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write.

Oh man sometimes I wake up feel like a cat runover. Are you familiar with the stoical aspects of hard drinking, of heavy drinking? Oh it's heavy. Oh it's hard. It isn't easy. Jesus, I never meant me any harm. All I wanted was a good time.

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.

Mere fact has no chance of being formally perfect. It will get in the way, it will be all elbows.