I've tried to believe, but I don't, I can't, and there's no use pretending.

I'm not a philosopher.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

I met Lee Harvey Oswald, in Moscow just after he defected. One night I was having dinner with a friend, an Italian newspaper cor­respondent, and when he came by to pick me up he asked me if I'd mind going with him first to talk to a young American defector, one Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was staying at the Metropole, an old Czarist hotel just off Kremlin Square.

It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I'll give you two.

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

Most contemporary novelists, especially the American and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; theyre enraptured by their navels and confined by a view that ends with their own toes.