Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything.

There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.

All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.

My grandfather had a particularly important influence on my life, even though I didn't visit him often, since he lived about three miles out of town and he died when I was six. He was remarkably curious about the world, and he read lots of books.

You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day.

Our most noted satirists are true columnists and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented exposé.

Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state.