I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.” May 19, 1962

I know that the writer does call up the general and maybe the essential through the particular, but this general and essential is still deeply embedded in mystery. It is not answerable to any of our formulas.

Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.

The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees.

When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably nobody else will.

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.