The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.

Some writers thrive on the contact with the commerce of success; others are corrupted by it. Perhaps, like losing one's virginity,it is not as bad (or as good) as one feared it was going to be.

There is more magic in sin if it is not committed.

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.

It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened.

The State, that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.

The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.