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.

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.

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

A person is the product of his learning. What he learns and how he interprets it is what he becomes.

When dreaming is better than reality we're livingWhat's the sense of waking up in a nightmare?

I am mad, and I embrace it.

I like wearing my wedding ring, it's nice.

In some ways, the challenge of staying political is to stay a dreamer at the same time.

Wow! It's like magic! she exclaimed. Simon shook his head. "It's God's love. That's stronger than any magic." - The Demon Trapper's Daughter

If you're leaving your family behind, you better believe in what you're singing.

Riches are not from abundance of worldly goods, but from a contented mind.

You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.

Every day, I have a most embarrassing moment.