So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.

When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathe News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax.

I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.” May 19, 1962

Policy and politics generally go contrary to principle.

Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama . . . . Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.

Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.