Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are pal….

Unlike most wars, which make rotten fiction in themselves - all plot and no characters, or made-up characters - Vietnam seems to be the perfect mix: ….

Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America..

I myself have not met a self‐confessed liberal since the late fifties (and even then it was a tacky thing to admit, like coming from the middle class….

I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all — what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about h….

The 1930s - a Golden Age for American humor, mainly because everything else was going so badly. The wisecrack was the basic American sentence because….

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities..

The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick..

You noodle around with tempo and sound until you get the perfect fit for that particular song, and then, so long as you can sustain it, God is on you….

Books about suicide make lousy gifts..

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English..

It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out….

The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other..

People talk about talent as though it were some neutral substance that can be applied to anything. But talent is narrow and only functions with a ver….

The actual Irish weather report is really a recording made in 1922, which no one has had occasion to change. "Scattered showers, periods of sunshine.".

Censors will try to censor a little bit more each year (because, like editors and other officious people, censors don't feel they are getting anywher….

Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of 'National Geographics,' is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one g….

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them..

I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find..

It's the old case against symbols: if you get them, they seem obvious and artificial, and if you don't, you miss the whole point..

The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which….