For what are the words with which to summarize a lifetime, so much crowded confused happiness terminated by such stark slow-motion pain?
For the widow inhabits a tale not of her own telling.
For once a truth is known it cannot be unknown, it can only be denied.
When you're fifty you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity-but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is tr...
Only when men are connected to large universal goals are they really happy-and one result of their happiness is a rush of creative activity.
Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose.
Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power.
To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if you're not aware of that when you're a child, the whole tradition is lost.
Papà ci amava. Ci ama.
This web of intricate connections
The dilemma is, in the United States, each penniless citizen believes that, with luck, he might become a millionaire; and so doesn't want to put restraints on robber barons-he might become one one day...
That glass sliver in the heart. Amid a fluttery-delicious Benzedrine rush, virtually every remark made to you is freighted with destiny, a sweet-painful stab in the heart. And Benzedrine and champagne...
My self is all to me. I don't have any need of you.
I'm sure all that you've heard is just the usual gossip, invented to injure feelings rather than illuminate truth.
How ironic, it seemed to me, yet, perhaps, how symbolic, that in our age of rapid mass production and the easy proliferation of consumer products, the richness and diversity of the American literary i...
Ever rising like the souls of the damned seeking salvation, Ariah said to Dirk Burnaby, in one of her rare moments of noticing him. Her fixed, wistful smile made him shudder.)
Death is just the last scene of the last act.
I haven't any formal schedule, but I love to write in the morning, before breakfast. Sometimes the writing goes so smoothly that I don't take a break for many hours - and consequently have breakfast a...