Once a Catholic always a Catholic.

Envy has the ugliness of a trapped rat that has gnawed its own foot in its effort to escape.

The novelist must be his own most harsh critic and also his own most loving admirer and about both he must say nothing.

The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they've been at other times.

People are able to live with only half a heart, to live without real compassion, because they are able to use words that are only forms.

I have no concern for the common man except that he should not be so common.

Life isn't just to be found, you have to work for it.

The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.

The roots of art and play lie very close together.

All fiction for me is a kind of magic and trickery, a confidence trick, trying to make people believe something is true that isn't.

Gerald Middleton was a man of mildly but persistently depressive temperament. Such men are not at their best at breakfast, nor is the week before Christmas their happiest time.

They have forgotten that war is momentum.War is natural. And war makes one strong.

I pastiche, I quote, I lie. Fake, forge, forage, fabricate, copy, borrow, transform, steal. I illusion. I’m a genuine deceiver, a shy sham artist.

How can stars shine facing your brightness if your beauty overwhelms them?

I think my first bikini, I was four and it was polka dotted and I had a big belly and I looked dashing.

Did you ever feel like the whole world was going to a party and your invitation got lost in the mail?

For most businesses, America is the most important asset on their balance sheet.

Tyranny is always weakness

I can imagine many things, but few clearly.

Your own destiny, create your own recipe.

There are times when I have to take, I call it a “silence bath,” where I shut off all of the external gadgets. I go walk around, talk to people, and just live life for a while.