There are so many different types of writers. It's just sheer coincidence that they're all called writers.

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.

Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener.... She was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself.

Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind—like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing.

No one ever confides a secret to one person only. No one destroys all copies of a document.

My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.

The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.

It was heaven. Forget angels, forget St. Peter and glittering harpsichords. Heaven was a dance in the arms of one's true love.

But war had a taming effect

My mind skidded round a very short track and passed the finish line in a matter of seconds without any sensible conclusion.

If you care about what people think about you, you will end up being their slave. Reject and pull your own rope.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

I feel an extraordinary amount of sympathy for anybody working at a major label right now because their lives are over.

President Kennedy was the greatest man I ever met, and the best friend I ever had.

As long as any pro wrestling we see on the TV screen doesn't insult my intelligence and can continually use common sense, basic logic and the presentation, I am pretty cool with it.

The women are always vixens or monsters. They can't just be normal people in the book.

The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul.