The suspense in a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist himself, who is intensely curious too about what will happen to the hero.

To be disesteemed by people you don't have much respect for is not the worst fate.

The happy ending is our national belief.

My occupational hazard is that I can't help plagiarizing from real life.

Be truthful... and pay attention. I would also recommend the avoidance of credit cards.

Like Michelangelo and Cellini, Florentines of every station are absorbed in acquiring real estate: a little apartment that can be rented to foreigners; a farm that will supply the owner with oil, wine, fruit, and flowers for the house.

It has to be acknowledged that in capitalist society, with its herds of hippies, originality has become a sort of fringe benefit, a mere convention, accepted obsolescence, the Beatnik model being turned in for the Hippie model, as though strangely obedient to capitalist laws of marketing.