He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, 'I ain't got any tattoo on my back.' 'What you got on it?' the girl said. 'My shirt,' Parker said. 'Haw.' 'Haw, haw,' the girl said politely.

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.

You get a real person down there and his talking will take care of itself.

I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.

I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it.

When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic.

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.