I have never received a telephone call that justified the excitement and fuss of the electronics involved. If I can't see somebody I love, for instance, such as a daughter, or a son, I would rather receive a letter.

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.

We are not forced into unpleasant activities. We either allow them to come about or we encourage them to come about.

The best thing we have is sleep, of course, and what is sleep except the putting aside of everything tentative for another interval of final and everlasting truth? Sleep isn't dying, but it is certainly keeping in tough with it.

Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I'm from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian wrtiters.

Every man is correct in asking God why he is stuck with himself, and his rotten luck.

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