It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.

A good smoker, like a good lover, always takes his time with a cigar.

I was never a true journalist, I was a movie critic.

I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread

I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

Cigars must be smoked one at a time, peaceably, with all the leisure in the world. Cigarettes are of the instant, Cigars are for eternity.

I was an avid radio fan when I was a boy, as well as a great lover of comic strips

So I do not consider myself a chronicler of my fatherland or even a chronicler of Havana

What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other

Writing for me, even what you call serious writing, is play.

Only God is good.""We can make good works, We can be called good folksWe can do good, but we cannot be good.

However, attention can be moved away from an unwanted focus, primarily by focusing intently on another target.

Good and evil lie close together. Seek no artistic unity in character.

I think that America has to stand with democracy.

When you have bad teams, you've got to be creative to win games you're not supposed to win.

I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

There is no such thing as a 'free' government benefit. Ask small-business owners who are footing skyrocketing bills for bottomless jobless benefits.

A warrior carries his shield for the sake of the entire line.

I can't imagine that anybody is as screwed up as I am.

I think it's a misreading of Dostoevsky to think of him as a programmatic theist. He's actually much closer to someone like William James. He's actually a pragmatist.