Perhaps he had to be close in order to keep a reason for the things he did. To make the things he did be themselves Life. And not merely a delightful exercise of technical skill which man had been able to achieve because he, of all the animals, had a fine thumb. Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life.

If you are an idealist, it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it isn't real anyway.

Your business as a writer is not to illustrate virtue but to show how a fellow may move toward it or away from it.

The asking and the answering which history provides may help us to understand, even to frame, the logic of experience to which we shall submit. History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

In one deep sense, novels are concealed autobiography. I don't mean that you are telling facts about yourself, but you are trying to find out what you really think or who you are.