A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lillies of the swamp.

There are those who know and those who don't know. And for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time--the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this.

I was like a cat always climbing the wrong tree.

What are the sources of an illumination? To me, they come after hours of searching and keeping my soul ready. Yet they come in a flash, as a religious phenomenon. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had such an illumination, beginning my long search for the truth of the story and flashing light into the long two years ahead.

The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.

I have more to say than Hemingway, and God knows, I say it better than Faulkner.

It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.