Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.

I don't write out of fear. I write out of a strong urge to meet death on its own eternal terms, because the fact is that if you write as little as a page of prose-even bad prose-that is eternal.

Life is, of course, terrible.

Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.

The downtrodden are the great creators of slang.

There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters.

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?