What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me; so simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island.

Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.

Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.

Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.

Joy and sadness come by turns.

A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.

I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.