Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that. I'm a lawyer.

there is no truly honest autobiography.

That is the tragedy of growing old, Chris. You don't leave the world. It leaves you.

[When working on a book] I have an almost complete detachment from the world I live in, a sort of armor against distraction. I talk to people, move about, appear on the surface much as usual. But later on I have only a confused memory of what has happened during that period.

To men and women who want to do things, there is nothing quite so driving as the force of an imprisoned ego. . . . All genius comes from this class.

Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.