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.

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.

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.

science is one, gods are manyscience allows change and accept new tested things but religion notscience laws are same all over earth but religions have different

I want to get to a point in my career where I can be a good role model.

Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

For pines are gossip pines the wide world through And full of runic tales to sigh or sing.

Racism built me into a person that was set up to be self-destructive.

The bad news motivated the drill instructors that much more.

Perhaps love is only the highest symbol of friendship, as all other things seem symbols of love.

To fly in space is to see the reality of Earth, alone. The experience changed my life and my attitude toward life itself. I am one of the lucky ones.

Reality is rarely what we imagine. Great and noble things do not always happen for great and noble reasons.

There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.