Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst..

The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he is reading a book..

If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four ….

It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture..

The war had made a man of him! It had coarsened him and hardened him. There was no other way to look at it. It had made him reach a point at which he….

For the judging of contemporary literature the only test is one's personal taste. If you much like a new book, you must call it literature even thoug….

There is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. An….

The world is full of places to which I want to return.

If you're going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he'd better be real enough that you can smell his breath..

The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. After forty-five years of mixing wit….

But responsibility hardens the heart. It must..

We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. So, for a time, if such a pa….

Mind, I am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not advocating free love in this or any other case. Society must go on, I suppo….

New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible - because it is large enough to be incurious..

Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge..

[W]e are almost always in one place with our minds somewhere quite other..

What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself..

Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing..

I know nothing - nothing in the world - of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone - horribly alone..

We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist..

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you..