It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.

There was an American girl, Priscilla Johnson. She worked for U.P. in Moscow. She knew [John] Kennedy, and she met [Lee Harvey] Oswald around the same time I did. But I can tell you some­thing else almost as curious.

One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it's going to be told.

It is very seldom that a person loves anyone they cannot in some way envy.

I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together.

She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. In this case, as opposed to the scrupulous method of good taste and scientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly.

The more you know about something, the harder it becomes. You become more and more of a perfectionist. I think it's a curse... It's a form of illness!