I suppose I started writing seriously at 16 years old. I thought I wrote a novel at 16 and sent it to New York! They sent it back because it wasn't novel.

Today I must write a paragraph or a page better than I did yesterday.

I write with as much objectivity as I can.

Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow.

I still don't even know if the sheriff will let me see him. And suppose he did; what then? What do I say to him? Do I know what a man is? Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I'm still trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die who has never lived?

We wait till now? Now, when we're old men, we get to be brave?

What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing.