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

The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person. All people belong to a We except me. Not to belong to a We makes you too lonesome.

All we can do is go around telling the truth.

And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.

This fear is one of the horrors of an author's life. Where does work come from? What chance, what small episode will start the chain of creation? I once wrote a story about a writer who could not write anymore, and my friend Tennessee Williams said, 'How could you dare write that story, it's the most frightening work I have ever read.' I was pretty well sunk while I was writing it.

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.

The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.