No idea is ever dead until those who believe in it say it's dead.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

If I were a young man, I would not hesitate at writing anything to get into print, except pornography.

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.

Contrary to what people think, I slave over my books.

I never wrote anything that was published until I was forty.

I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.