Alimony is the curse of the writing class.

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

Over the years, I've found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.

Prevarication, like honesty, is reflexive, and soon becomes a sturdy habit, as reliable as truth.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

When the time comes, they won't ask what kind of a Jew you are.