What is the definition of guts? Grace under pressure.

We wait always for something that does not come.

In those days, there was no money to buy books.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. . . .When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have e made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

How little we know of what there is to know.