You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.

Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.

I think the "crime novel" has replaced the sociological novel of the 1930s. I think the progenitor of that tradition is James M. Cain, who in my view is the most neglected writer in American literature.

...and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.

Don't undo a brave and noble deed. Don't rob yourself of your own virtue.

But the participants [in war] never forgot the details of their experience, and like the Wandering Jew, they were condemned to remain their own history books, each containing a story they could not pass on to others and from which no one would learn anything of value.

Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.