A story must simmer in its own juice for months or even years before it's ready to serve.

don't you hate people who say they're not complaining and then complain?

All the difference in the world between the movies and the thrill I get out of a play at the theater. Ay, yes! Like fooling around with paper dolls when you could be playing with a real live baby.

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

The small town smart set is deadly serious about its smartness.

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

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.