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

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.

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.

In the face of immense tragedy—yet again—unexpected beauty.

It is only by giving our very best to the present

Figs are delicious with soft cheese and ham, Toast is quite scrumptious with butter and jam, Eggs are improved by parsley and salt, But milkshakes are best with strawberries and malt.

I don't know why I always end up talking about my relationships. I try not to.

Haste is never more dangerous than when you feel that victory is in your grasp.

A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions.

The Negro neighborhood, which is inferior, is begging for a chance to - integrate itself into that which is - is superior, which is not going to happen. It's going to cause trouble.

I never write about CIA conspiracies or the FBI or mafia or anything like that because I just dont understand that world. But I think I do understand individual human harmfulness.