I cringe when critics say I’m a master of the popular novel. What’s an unpopular novel?

I never drink while I’m working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

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 casually inspect the universe.

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

There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys the writing, even if he doesn’t get paid for it.