I know as a writer how valuable a tool is the wastebasket. Perhaps God throws away many experiments before He finds the right expression. Perhaps we are the discards - or we could be the part He keeps. This mystery is what keeps us all going, to see what happens in the next chapter.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.

Whenever I'm in trouble, I pray. And because I'm in trouble all of the time, I pray almost constantly.

The second half of the twentieth century is a complete flop.

No lepidopterist's collection in the entire world...full if iridescent wings, is worth the life of a single butterfly.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.