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.

The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.

You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!

I have also led you astray by talking of technique as if it were something that could be separated from the rest of the story. Technique can't operate at all, of course, except on believable material.

People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

I will rejoice the day when they say: This is right whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding.

There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.