Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories it is something organic, something that grows out of the material, and this being the case, it is different for every story of any account that has ever been written.

A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.

I have what passes for an education in this day and time, but I am not deceived by it.

... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.

Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.

I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.