A farmer's got to be born, same as a fool. You can't make a corn pone out of flour dough by the twistin' of it.

Passion alone could destroy passion. All the thinking in the world could not make so much as a dent in its surface.

The hardest thing for me is the sense of impermanence. All passes; nothing returns.

There is no monster more destructive than the inventive mind that has outstripped philosophy.

I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.

Most women want their youth back again; but I wouldn't have mine back at any price. The worst years of my life are behind me, and my best ones ahead.

In the past few years, I have made a thrilling discovery ... that until one is over sixty, one can never really learn the secret of living. One can then begin to live, not simply with the intense part of oneself, but with one's entire being.