She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.

It is always difficult to get across to people who are not professional writers that a talent to write does not mean a talent to write anything at all.

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.

It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

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

I feel that discussing story-writing in terms of plot, character, and theme is like trying to describe the expression on a face by saying where the eyes, nose, and mouth are.

It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries.