I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.

A story has to have muscle as well as meaning, and the meaning has to be in the muscle.

Purity strikes me as the most mysterious of the virtues and the more I think about it the less I know about it.

Success means being heard and don't stand there and tell me that you are indifferent to being heard. You may write for the joy of it, but the act of writing is not complete in itself. It has to end in its audience.

Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are

We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.

I am no disbeliever in spiritual purpose and no vague believer. I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in relation to that.