"I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a reporter. I don't know where I got the idea that it was a romantic calling."

"It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals."

"I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading."

"My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on, because she was so mad about its treatment of my father."

"When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars."

"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting."

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

"Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing - 'Oh, let's put that sentence there, let's get rid of this' - have become commonplace in films and music too."