Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.

American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.

Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.

Love and hate are so confused in your savage minds and the vibrations of the one are so very like those of the other that I can't always distinguish. You see, we neither love nor hate in my world. We simply have hobbies.

I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that's how one starts. Or I started.

Next to "I win," "I told you so" are the sweetest words.

Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.