“I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”

“Well, as to that, all I'll say is, you can't take out a fellow's heart before he's ready to give it up.”

“A long apprenticeship is the most logical way to success. The only alternative is overnight stardom, but I can't give you a formula for that. ”

“I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through - then follow through.”

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.”

“The formula for success is Cosmic Ordering, the formula for failure is worry.”

“A great number of elements in the characters’ lives, both psychic and factual, are not communicated to us. […] These characters, I believe, enjoy a much greater autonomy than we usually think, and are able to take initiatives unknown both to the writer and the reader. When characters have their own will, their own autonomy, it gives the literary universe a greater internal mobility; it also makes the texts through which we view this world all the more open and incomplete.”