You know, as I've grown older, my ideas about sin have changed. I used to believe that sins were things you did, but I don't think that now. I think sins are what you ignore.

Perhaps it's simply the dual nature of marriage, the proximity of violence and love.

Hardcover and paperback forever. Someone carve that into a tree.

People think of travel, of movement, as a kind of reprieve from life. But they're wrong. Movement isn't a reprieve. There is no reprieve. Movement is our permanent state.

Once when I went over my work with my Washington University professor, the late great Stanley Elkin, he pointed to a passage of mine and said: Stop vamping. It has remained a caution.

It is possible, he thought, to be completely happy in marriage--though you must be willing to hold on when your ship was lost at sea and there was no guarantee of rescue.

Give yourself permission to dream, to choose, to decide.

The trouble with discarding bad memories was that evidently the good ones went with them

I am not one of those people who will ever be comfortable mocking or making caricatures of the stereotypes attached to any community.

Why should I give my Readers bad lines of my own when good ones of other People's are so plenty?

I have been vegetarian for twelve years. And I have never been seriously ill. Vegetarian food strengthens the immune system. I think that meat makes you sick.

Nobody seems to know yet how television is going to affect the radio, movies, love, housekeeping or the church, but it has definitely revived vaudeville.

All is well that ends well

My mom wore the pants in the family, for sure. I always say, that I spent my childhood trying to get the love and attention of my mom, and now I can't get rid of it.

To get to where you want to be in the next 5 years, you are either reading the right books or you're not

I'm crazy about Shakespeare, who was a notorious word inventor. And my wife is an English teacher, and she's hilarious.