The best that can be said for anybody is probably that you misunderstood him favorably.

I always know a lie when I hear it, and the effect it has on me is no good at all. I go berserk just forcing myself not to go berserk, just trying to see truth in the lie, to see it in full context, and in a dimension in which it has got to be more than just a lie, possibly the profoundest kind of truth.

The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.

I don't have a name and I don't have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and that should add up to a novel.

Sometimes the most intelligent thing is not to do anything, certainly nothing loaded with the imbecility of emotionality.

Writers are a fascinating breed, because there are so many kinds of them, they are made by so many circumstances, conditions, and mysteries, and there are so many ways for writing to be done.

I never knew teachers are human beings like everybody else-- and better too!