Somerset Maugham ... wrote somewhere that "Nobody is any better than he ought to be."... I carried it along with me as a working philosophy, but I suppose that finally I would have to take exception to the thought ... or else the universe is just an elaborate clock.

I don't read other writers because I'm writing all the time. It's too disturbing to read a writer with a good style when you're in the middle of putting your work together.

When I read it ["Tough Guys Don't Dance"], I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.

...never have I subscribed to the doctrine of willful rejection of the world or its visual image. To the non-objectivist this act of impiety may be shockingly impure, but God, I have no desire to be either hollow or sterile.

Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.

The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision.