Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.

And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.

The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he is reading a book.

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.

If you're going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he'd better be real enough that you can smell his breath.

What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself.

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.

Pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. But if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go.

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!

New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible - because it is large enough to be incurious.

Adam and Eve had first-hand empirical evidence of God’s existence. He walked in the Garden with them. Their problem was that God told them they could not eat of a certain tree. – p. 113

It's normal to shy away from illness and death. It's natural to gravitate toward laughter and life.

I'm sometimes scared that I'm forgetting what my dad was like.

God has joy for you right now.

I play American football every Saturday, which I find calming.

A man says to the doctor: "What's the good news?" "You've got 24 hours to live." He says: "What's the bad news?" The doctor says: "We should have told you yesterday."

We didn't stow away!" Dan protested. "You sunk our boat and pulled us out of the canal!" "Good point," Ian agreed. "Return them to the canal. Roughly, please.

He who stays not in his littleness, loses his greatness.

The military code of justice sets out exactly what type of charges are available for specific acts.

If you get one photograph that's good from a trip, that's plenty.