Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.
When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.
Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.
If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.
