“The great novelists are philosophical novelists--that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.”

“I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play.”

“Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either."(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)”

“I believe that only poetry counts ... A great novelist is first of all a great poet.”

“The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.”

“What's this "rough life of a novelist" bullshit? You sound like an idiot.You're a writer. At least give yourself better lines.”