In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved.

The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don't do it. I have been out there. It is a mess....

Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

There are no liberals behind steering wheels.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.