I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.

They threw me off the haytruck about noon.

Love, when you get fear in it, it's not love any more. It's hate.

New York is not even a city, it's a congerie of rotten villages.

Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort.

Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.