From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it; it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain.

In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.

Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.

Write about it by day and dream about it by night.

But real life is only one kind of life—there is also the life of the imagination.

Life's meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.