Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.

The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is...."

Do you think it's so snobbish, to want to see something besides one's fellow citizens abroad?

It might be the doing of Satan, in whom Aaron anxiously believed with all of his being except, perhaps, his mind.

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years?

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.

There is no greater compliment to the Jews than the fact that the degree of their unpopularity is always the scientific measure of the cruelty and silliness of the regime under which they live.