When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing, haloed suns.

...I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it again.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories it is something organic, something that grows out of the material, and this being the case, it is different for every story of any account that has ever been written.

... the main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.

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.

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.