Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.

I never understand how writers can succumb to vanity - what you work the hardest on is usually the worst.

People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

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.

Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama . . . . Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.