The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Time is how you spend your love.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't confuse honours with achievement.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

I knew it the first of the summer, I knew it the same at the end, That you and your love were plighted, But couldn't you be my friend?

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language.

Usually, a well thought answer makes an aggressor think twice.

We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric.

Women bond differently, and I dont think men understand that.

Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You’ve got to get the fundamentals down because otherwise the fancy stuff isn’t going to work.

The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar.

I was reminded of the Sydney Harris cartoon that said 'adding two numbers that have not been added before does not constitute a mathematical breakthrough'.

A man can only grow to a certain point when alone; to grow further you need some "irrational shocks", like a wife and children; a dramatic change to your own life.

There is an old poor man,. . . . Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger.