“But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?”

“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.”

“Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.”

“A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.”

“Anyone can write. Some people can write a bit better than others; they're called authors. Then there are some who can write better than authors; they're called artists.”

“Whenever we write an axiom, a critic can say that the axiom is true only in a certain context. With a little ingenuity the critic can usually devise a more general context in which the precise form of the axiom doesn't hold. […] There simply isn't a most general context.”

“An individual who isn't worth the ink it would take to write about him.”

“There isn't much I find interesting to write about in middle-class life.”

“An author frequently chooses solemn or overwhelming subjects to write about; he is so impressed at writing about Life and Death that he does not notice that he is saying nothing of the slightest importance about either.”

“When an American thinks about the problem of government-building, he directs himself not to be creation of authority and the accumulation of power but rather to the limitation of authority and the division of power.”