For me, the novel is experience illumined by imagination.

you could have forgiven my committing a sin if you hadn't feared that I had a committed a pleasure as well.

Women like to sit down with trouble - as if it were knitting.

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

As far back as I remember, long before I could write, I had played at making stories. But not until I was seven or more, did I begin to pray every night, "O God, let me write books! Please, God, let me write books!"

Cruelty, I truly believe, is the one and only sin.

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