A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.

In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.

Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.

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

I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.

Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?

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