Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.

I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

It took the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 50 years to wake up to Pablo Picasso. It didn't own one of his paintings until 1946 when Gertrude Stein bequeathed that indomitable quasi-Cubistic picture of herself - a portrait of the writer as a sumo Buddha - to the Met principally because she disliked the Museum of Modern Art.

Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book If art doesn't make us better then what on earth is it for.

It is no great art to say something briefly when like Tacitus one has something to say when one has nothing to say however and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds the book of their words and the book of their art.

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene and as if by magic we see a new meaning in it.

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.