No one needs a word processor if he has an efficient secretary.

My dear fellow, my whole life is moved by the principle that the one thing which is more important than peace is music. It is because I believe that I am poor.

Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself.

If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creature s let him begin the long, solitary task of perfecting himself.

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

Women say . . . that if men had to have babies there would soon be no babies in the world. . . . I have sometimes wished that some clever man would actually have a baby in some new labor-saving way; then all men could take it up, and one of the oldest taunts in the world would be stilled forever.

There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.