“Conquered people tend to be witty.”

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.

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.

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.

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

The writing I tend to think of as ‘good’ is good because it’s mysterious.

Critic, relent!Your hope for repentanceWill meet with disapppointment.For this is the life,Not desert tents,Not camel’s milk!

Sawyer: Alone in your tent? Um, no. You’re in my tent