The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.

the writer is initially set going by literature more than by life.

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

... the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable in his personality, those qualities which are all he will have to take into eternity with him.

I don’t want any of this artificial superficial feeling stimulated by the choir. Today I have proved myself a glutton—​for Scotch oatmeal cookies and erotic thought. There is nothing left to say of me.

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.

Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.