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.

When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

There are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of James Joyce, who, however insane they may be, have refused to be genteel and traditional and dull.

There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.

When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism