I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface

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.

Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! You must achieve mastery over your idealism, over your virtue as well as over your vice, aesthetic mastery over everything that drives you to write in the first place - your outrage, your politics, your grief, your love!

The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

What I would really love to happen to me would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy until I die so I wouldn't have to go through the business of thinking up a new book. But I wouldn't mind writing a long book which is going to occupy me for the rest of my life.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.