The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.

For my part, if a man must needs be a knave I would have him a debonair knave... It makes your sin no worse as I conceive, to do it à la mode and stylishly.

A faint smile played on his lips. "Obedience does not come naturally to you, does it?""No...sir""I must take some blame for that, I suppose. The sea does not like to be restrained.

If you read the novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really

It's the worst kind of cruelty — the thoughtless kind. You can't cope with it.

Have the courage of your desire.

I'm so bad at spontaneous impressions.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

I've been circling the wagons down at Times Square, trying to fill up this hole in my soul but nothing fits in there.

We don't have the freedom of speech to talk about the weather. We have the first amendment so we can say some very controversial things.

Duets is about six people, so it's like three different movies - three different duets. I was on the set 18 days, spread out over three and a half or four weeks.