You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.

Clearly much that seemed valid seemed so only because he had been taught it from earliest youth.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.