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.

A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.

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

A poet sees things in two ways: First, as a child who never saw it before, and Second, as a dying man who will never see it again.

Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again tomorrow.

All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.

I was surprised when shortly after New Year's Day of 1983, the Governor of Texas summoned me to his office, because I hadn't been aware that he knew I was in town.