The challenge to writers today, I think, is not to disown any part of our heritage. Whatever our theme in writing, it is old and tried. Whatever our place, it has been visited by the stranger, it will never be new again. It is only the vision that can be new; but that is enough.

Every story teaches you how to write that story but not the next story.

Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures.

The first act of insight is throw away the labels.

The mystery lies in the use of language to express human life.

I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.

I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken-and to know a truth.