I intend to be good for the rest of my natural life -- if I live that long.

When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.

Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life.

Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.

I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.

In art as in life, form and subject, body and soul, are one.

The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.