It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.

The difference between farce and humour in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humour varies its note, changes its key, grows and spreads and deepens until it may indeed reach tragic depths.

A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.

One recalls how much the creative impulse of the best-sellers depends upon self-pity. It is an emotion of great dramatic potential.

We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.

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.

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.