A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.

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

What I really do is take real plums and put them in an imaginary cake.

From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people.

As soon as you become a writer, you lose contact with ordinary experience or tend to. ... the worst fate of a writer is to become a writer.

The erotic element always present in fashion, the kiss of loving labor on the body, is now overtly expressed by language. Belts hug or clasp; necklines plunge; jerseys bind. The word exciting tingles everywhere.

The comic element is the incorrigible element in every human being; the capacity to learn, from experience or instruction, is what is forbidden to all comic creations and to what is comic in you and me.