Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself

Literature got me into this mess and literature is going to have to get me out of it.

Doctor, I had never had anybody like her in my life, she was the fulfillment of my most lascivious adolescent dreams– but marry her, can she be serious? You see, for all her preening and perfumes, she has a very low opinion of herself, and simultaneously– and here is the source of much of our trouble-a ridiculously high opinion of me. And simultaneously, a very low opinion of me! She is one confused Monkey, and, I'm afraid, not too very bright.

A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.

For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.

We live in an age in which the imagination of the novelist is helpless against what he knows he is going to read in tomorrow's newspaper.