The writer is a writer because he cannot help it. It is a compulsion.

Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth.

If it's freedom you want, come to Texas. No one there tells you what to do and how you have to do it.

Take Texas the way Texas takes bourbon. Straight. It goes down easier.

The goat's business is none of the sheep's concern.

Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.

America -- rather, the United States -- seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, over-friendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The chuckle among the nations of the world.