"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over"

"Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo style of architecture."

"From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?"

"Madame, it is an old word and each one takes it new and wears it out himself. It is a word that fills with meaning as a bladder with air and the meaning goes out of it as quickly. It may be punctured as a bladder is punctured and patched and blown up again and if you have not had it does not exist for you. All people talk of it, but those who have had it are marked by it, and I would not wish to speak of it further since of all things it is the most ridiculous to talk of and only fools go through it many times."

"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over."

"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."

"The rich were dull and they drank too much or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Julian and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, ''The very rich are different from you and me.'' And how someone had said to Julian, ''Yes, they have more money.''"

"To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them"

"You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it."

"They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him."

"All our words from loose using have lost their edge"

"He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any many could have"

"We had real problems in the paint."

"It would undermine the housing market, and could quickly result in credit problems that would affect the entire [US] financial system."

"Labor will start demanding bigger pay increases and will get them."

"A bunch of problems that we have ahead of us are largely because of these tax cuts. They are very costly and will contribute significantly to budget deficits in the future."

"I think this is a harbinger of more problems to come, ... I think we should look for fresh new records [in delinquencies] in the fourth quarter and first quarter of next year as [credit card] payments rise higher and as energy prices really begin to bite."

"It was weird because I was pregnant, throughout that so it was weird being a pregnant witch. I was in a really bad mood but luckily, because I sleep with the director, he just sort of scheduled me so I only had to do it two nights."

"Sometimes when things you love get really commercial, you end up feeling betrayed by it."

"The Jewish part of me is superstitious."

"There's something that sort of weirds me out "about "actors who want to be rock stars, and the other way around too."

"When you're so out there in the public eye, people are constantly criticizing every aspect about you."

"We feel it's unacceptable to be fat, when it has nothing to do with who the person actually is."

"Women were real box office stars in the '40s, more so than men. People loved to see women's films. I think it was better then, except for the studio system."