“Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.”

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

… it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.

If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.

(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.

If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.

We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.

One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.

The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he knows he can’t.

The name of ‘reform’ simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.

To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one’s responsibility as a free man.

Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.

The time for common-sense immigration reform is now,

There are now that 20 consent decrees in place like the one in Baltimore that are helping put broken police departments on a path to reform. And this is long work.

It does not appear, nor is there any reason to believe that [ Jeff Sessions] will put policing reform front and center in the way that this justice department has.