It's Almost Worth Having Been

The Only Excuse For A Novelist, Aside From The Entertainment And Vicarious Living His Books Give The People Who Read Them, Is As A Sort Of Second-class Historian Of The Age He Lives In. The "reality" He Missed By Writing About Imaginary People, He Gains By Being Able To Build A Reality More Nearly Out Of His Own Factual Experience Than A Plain Historian Or Biographer Can.

This Ain't A War... It's A Goddam Whorehouse.

The Terrible Thing About Having New York Go Stale On You Is That There's Nowhere Else. It's The Top Of The World.

Mealtime's The Only Time I Get To Devote To The Things Of The Spirit.

The Only Way To Find Out Anything About What Kinds Of Lives People Led In Any Given Period Is To Tunnel Into Their Records And To Let Them Speak For Themselves