That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," and he drove off with a look of disgust and righteousness.

I write to discover what I know.

You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.

I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.

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.

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.