You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer.

I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself..

Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody..

I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I ….

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.

The writer works in a lonely way..

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy..

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.

In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that..

I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it.

I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much..

Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House.

My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have.

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written.

People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly..

I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it..

Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory..

You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the ti….

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms..

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. Why do kids play football? They can get hurt on any play, can't they? Yet they can't wait until Satur….