When this immediate evil power has been defeated, we shall not yet have won the long battle with the elemental barbarities. Another Hitler, it may be an invisible adversary, will attempt, again, and yet again, to destroy our frail civilization. Is it true, I wonder, that the only way to escape a war is to be in it? When one is a part of an actuality does the imagination find a release?

A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.

The truth is I've got the land on my back, an' it's drivin' me. Land is a hard driver.

He knows so little and knows it so fluently.

convictions ... are always getting in the way of opportunities.

Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted.

to be honest and yet popular is almost as difficult in literature as it is in life.