All good writers speak in honest voices and tell the truth.

Dialogue has to show not only something about the speaker that is its own revelation, but also maybe something about the speaker that he doesn't know but the other character does know.

Learning stamps you with its moments. Childhood's learning is made up of moments. It isn't steady. It's a pulse.

Write about what you don't know about what you know.

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

No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.

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