I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

Once the process [of conversion] is begun and continues...you are continually turning inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity...you have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that.

I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.

There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it's well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world.

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