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.

It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.

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.

You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably nobody else will.

Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

She had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.

My own approach to literary problems is very like the one Dr. Johnson's blind housekeeper used when she poured tea-she put her finger inside the cup.