It sounds so far away and different. I like different places. I like any places that isn't here.

But almost any place is Baghdad if you don't know what will happen in it.

One can summon courage and fortitude to face tragedy; irritations and frustrations are a cloud of mosquitoes that nip and sting and drive one frantic.

There are only two kinds of people in the world that really count. One kind's wheat and the other kind's emeralds.

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.

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

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