Anybody who wants to rule a group will find that if this group is quarreling among themselves they leave you alone.

I don't like to see mistakes on the typewriter. I like a perfect script. On the typewriter I will sometimes leave a phrase that is not right, not what I want, simply because to change it would be a bit messy.

A pen on paper is the ideal way for me. I am not really very comfortable with machines; I never learned to type very well.

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.

A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing

I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

I don't want to be the one to tell somebody, You will not make it, even though I know that the majority of those who come to me with their manuscripts are not really good enough.