James Baldwin

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.

It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much has been put in their minds to begin with.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them.