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.

It is a good deal easier for most people to state an abstract idea than to describe and thus re-create some object they actually see.

There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.

If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.

He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him.

I am very much afraid that to the fiction writer the fact that we shall always have the poor with us is a source of satisfaction,for it means, essentially, that he will always be able to find someone like himself.

Grace changes us and change is painful".