I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.

That's all a writer has to write about - what he sees and hears and what not.

When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique I may have I owe entirely to my training in this medium.

All artists are two-headed calves.

All literature is gossip.

Are the dead as lonesome as the living?

there is only one unpardonable sin--deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.