To a true-blue professor of literature in an American university, literature is not something that a plain human being, living today, painfully sits down to produce. No; it is something dead.

Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment.

It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends.

Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.

Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.

You have more people that love you than you know.