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

If you can't be friends with a lover, then forget it. It's not going to work.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

There is no shame — having a dirty face — the shame comes when you keep it dirty.

There's lots of things you don't know. All kinds of strange things . . . mostly they happened before we were born: that makes them seem to me so much more real.

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.

I've never had an affair with somebody who wasn't at the same time a very good friend of mine, if you see what I mean.