Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.

I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.

I have no warm up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink.

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.

Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north...As he peeked ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.