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 is it is cool and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit again.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

It is impossible to believe the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure, classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped over a stick.

The time to work is shorter all the time and if you waste it you ... have committed a sin for which there is no forgiveness.

It's a town you come to for a short time.

Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.

If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy. But since I am not, I do not care.