The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

And never, ever, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.

You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.

I don't recommend being a bachelor, but it helps if you want to write.

Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.