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.

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.

Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.

It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.

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

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

Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics! I've heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I've never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis.