I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable...

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And...

Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.

Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they’d be bitches if you knew...

That’s something that annoys the hell out of me- I mean if somebody says the coffee’s all ready and it isn’t

And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I’d probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.

Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.

We have a bad habit of seeing books as sort of cheaply made movies where the words do nothing but create visual narratives in our heads.So too often what passes for literary criticism is “I...