Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

We are most alive when we're in love.

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

That a marriage ends is less than ideal but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.

The first breath of adultery is the freest after it, constraints aping marriage develop.

Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.

Dreams come true without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.