I had a strong desire to write and some free time.

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the "fronts" people assume before one another's eyes, and the "front" a writer puts on the face of reality.

To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.

There is a certain age when a woman must be beautiful to be loved, and then there comes a time when she must be loved to be beautiful.

I have loved to the point of madness; That which is called madness, That which to me, Is the only sensible way to love.

A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to take it off of you.

One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.

Art must take reality by surprise.

For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured.

I always believe things are going to work out.

From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.

I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them and I really liked having them around.

He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.

Novels are . . . an unsurpassed form to understand people.

You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia.

When we fully realize who God is, we learn that each of us is a child of the King!

Love, even that love which is imagined, is sometimes all we have to get us through.

We should not speak so that it is possible for the audience to understand us, but so that it is impossible for them to misunderstand us.

Sockets are the X windows of IO interfaces.

When you don't take into account the way ecological systems work, then you do damage.