“Why should a sequence of words be anything but a pleasure?”

Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.

The artist works by locating the world in himself.

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

Poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of everything.

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.

If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.

It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.

I understand you undertake to overthrow my undertaking.

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistance.

You are extraordinary within your limits, but your limits are extraordinary!

Too few is as many as too many.

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don’t get young men standing up and saying, ‘How can I combine career and family?’

To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill.

It is a common sentence that knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what ignorance in an hour pulls down.

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

It’s strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.

If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.

Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

I’m a strong alpha male but sensitive.