“In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.”

“I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.”

“a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)”

“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”

“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”

“Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!”

“I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place”