Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.

... one doesn't really profit from experience; one merely learns to predict the next mistake.

Since the moment of the United Nations' inception, untold energies have been expended by governments not only toward the exclusion of persons of principle and distinction from the organization's leading positions, but toward the installation of men whose character and affiliations would as far as possible preclude any serious challenge to governmental sovereignty.

Italians are never punctual; the café, the convenient place to wait, absolves them from that. There is no question of hanging about, no looking lost and unwanted or even disreputable, as there is in hotel lobbies or the foyers of restaurants. One just sits and enjoys the scene, and waits.

I have a superstition that if I talk about plot, it's like letting sand out of a hole in the bottom of a bag.

Nothing creates such untruth in you as the wish to please.

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.