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

The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.

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.

Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.

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.

The businessman who is a novelist is able to drop in on literature and feel no suicidal loss of esteem if the lady is not at home, and he can spend his life preparing without fuss for the awful interview.

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