“By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.”

“We are given our place in time as we are given our eyes: weak, strong, clear, squinting, the thing is not ours to choose. Well, this has been a squinting, walleyed time to be born in.”

“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”

“If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny, then one begins to understand why men and women don't get on very well within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as many babies as possible with as many different women as he can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off from her busy schedule as astronaut or role model to lay an egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of us serial killers, killers of our own true nature. ”

“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.”

“For a man to successful, not only must he succeed but his friends must also fail.”

“Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made”