“All good writing is like swimming underwater and holding your breath.”

“What are you going to do? "Can't say - run for president, write -" "Greenwich Village?" "Good heavens, no - I said write - not drink.”

“Rosemary felt that this swim would become the typical one of her life, the one that would always pop up in her memory at the mention of swimming.”

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”

“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life. ”

“A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.”

“In fact to write (This Side of Paradise) took three months; to conceive it-- three minutes; to collect the data in it-- all my life.”