Realism can break a writer's heart.

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind. We need to protect artists and journalists people to allow them to work.

Life is lived forward but is judged in reverse.

Believe in your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess.

When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.

As I look back, I feel a touch of pride at my younger self's dedication to literature, which gave him the strength of mind to resist the blandishments of the enemies of promise. The sirens of ad-land sang sweetly and seductively, but I thought of Odysseus lashing himself to the mast of his ship, and somehow stayed on course.

I do think that there is such a thing as human nature, and that the things that we have in common are perhaps greater than the things that divide us.