Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.

I won't talk to you about my family and you won't talk to me about yours. Family talk is either boring or self-pitying. Or it's Gothic, like a Faulkner novel. Who needs to talk about it? It's enough to live it.

There is in my work a very strong religious foreground and background. In the later work some of that tends to diminish, but it's certainly present in the early work.

We need to listen to one another.

It is inconceivable to me that a million or three million or half a million human beings will think and feel precisely the same way on any single subject.

I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again.

Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship.