“All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he’s a writer. It’s an aphrodisiac.”

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

I’m glad I haven’t lived in vain.

I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.

There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever… money, for instance, or war.

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

I’ve never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn’t have a price tag on the other side.

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

Conquered people tend to be witty.

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.

We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.

In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.