The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.

Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

There's many a bestseller 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.

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

I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a "killing." They are interested in being a writer not in writing. . . If this is what you are interested in, I am not going to be much use to you.

There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.