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.

In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.

The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth.

I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.

It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal through the senses with abstractions.

Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.