A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

A man is only as good as what he loves.

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and a multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to ...

California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.