What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damned thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs.

The brain can be hoodwinked but not the stomach.

I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.

Hemingway never grew out of adolescence. His scope and depth stayed shallow because he had no idea what women are for.

Wolfe was drinking beer and looking at pictures of snowflakes in a book someone had sent him from Czechoslovakia... ...Wolfe seemed absorbed in the pictures. Looking at him, I said to myself, "He's in a battle with the elements. He's fighting his way through a raging blizzard, just sitting there comfortably looking at pictures of snowflakes. That's the advantage of being an artist, of having imagination." I said aloud, "You mustn't go to sleep, sir, it's fatal. You freeze to death." The League of Frightened Men

The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books.

God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.