Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.

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?

I think I'm a very religious person. I think I believe in God as much as any man does. I don't only believe in God, I know there's God.

The artist must be like a heart surgeon. He must approach something with sympathy, but with a sort of coldness and work and work until he finds some kind of perfection in his work. You can't have blood splashing all over the place. Things must be done very cleanly.

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.

The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.

I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.