For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.

... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.

love of truth, ordinary common truth recognizable to everyone, is the ruling passion of the novel.

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.

The return to a favorite novel is generally tied up with changes in oneself that must be counted as improvements, but have the feel of losses. It is like going back to a favorite house, country, person; nothing is where it belongs, including one's heart.

A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.

We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.