Occupation: Novelist Birth: March 19, 1933
You cannot observe people through an ideology. Your ideology observes for you..
Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradua….
The thought of the novelist lies not in the remarks of his characters or even in their introspection but in the plight he has invented for his charac….
Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on..
That can happen when people die, the argument with them drops away and people so flawed while they were drawing breath that at times they were all bu….
The secret to living in the rush of the world with a minimum of pain is to get as many people as possible to string along with your delusions; the tr….
What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you ….
If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read the novel really..
To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don't read ….
To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth. Ivory is the soap that floats; Rice Krispies th….
I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the crit….
I do not say correct or savory. I do not say seemly or even natural. I say serious. Sensationally serious. Unspeakably serious. Solemnly, recklessly,….
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts….
You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the ….
My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck ….
You don't want to repeat yourself for one. You don't want to fall into the clichés for another. And you don't want to be licentious really. You want ….
--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others.
For someone whose roots in America were strong but only inches deep, and who had no experience, such as a Catholic child might, of an awesome hierarc….
I know I'm not going to write as well as I used to. I no longer have the stamina to endure the frustration. Writing is frustration - it's daily frust….
The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think othe….
What I would really love to happen to me would be if I came upon an idea that would keep me busy until I die so I wouldn't have to go through the bus….