Bizarre as was the name she bore, Kim Ravenal always said she was thankful it had been no worse.

I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion.

celebratin' New Year's Eve is like eatin' oranges. You got to let go your dignity t' really enjoy 'em.

writers of novels are so busy being solitary that they haven't time to meet one another. But then, a writer learns nothing from a writer, conversationally. If a writer has anything witty, profound or quotable to say he doesn't say it. He's no fool. He writes it.

A closed mind is a dying mind.

I don't know what it is that makes a writer go to his desk in his shut-off room day after day after year after year unless it is the sure knowledge that not to have done the daily stint of writing that day is infinitely more agonizing than to write.

Any piece of furniture, I don't care how beautiful it is, has got to be lived with, and kicked about, and rubbed down, and mistreated by servants, and repolished, and knocked around and dusted and sat on or slept in or eaten off of before it develops its real character ... A good deal like human beings.