No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.

The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.

Modern life ... is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be

Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre.

He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgement.

Creation's probably overrated. After all, God made the world in only six days and rested on the seventh.