Writing is a way of living life more intensely.

While statistics say that 95 percent of all young men who enter business fail, this should not discourage any one. Go out with the spirit “sink or swim,”and a person will not sink.

The novel is a great discovery: far greater than Galileo's telescope or somebody else's wireless. The novel is the highest form of human expression so far attained. Why? Because it is so incapable of the absolute.

I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart.