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.

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.

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.

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.

Better guilt than the terrible burden of freedom and responsibility.

A rainy day is like a lovely gift -- you can sleep late and not feel guilty.

Christ, seven years of college, down the drain.

What’s the goal?” asked Carlos. “I’m glad you asked, ” said Harry. You – all of you – and I – we’re going to save the world.

A captain who does not know where he wants to sail, there is no wind on Earth that will bring him there.

I'm thinking of Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music... there are too many to name really. And all the old classic ones like Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs and Bambi. That's brutal!

Our government shouldn't make promises we cannot keep, but we must keep the promises we've already made.

Only when the problem is gone will we get rid of the word 'feminism'. But I doubt that will happen in my lifetime

I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me.

In the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced.