The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.

Psychoanalysis and Zen, in my private psychic geometry, are equal to nicotine. They are anti-existential. Nicotine quarantines one out of existence.

No heart is so hard as the timid heart.

Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.

Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself.

We have an absolute right in a democracy to argue about a war.

It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.