A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.

The facts are always less than what really happened.

The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.

Communists are the last optimists.

I don't understand writers who feel they shouldn't have to do any of the ordinary things of life, because I think that this is necessary: one has to keep in touch with that... The ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's or spraying some plants infected with greenfly is a very sane and good thing to do. It brings one back, so to speak. It also brings the world back.

Perhaps the best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one's reactions, answerable to no one's views.

People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.