Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer.

You’re so American. You believe everything is possible, everything will come. I know differently.

Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.

It's tremendous: this world, this life. Take it while you have it.

Children are our crop, our fields, our earth. They are birds let loose into darkness. They are errors renewed. Still, they are the only source from which may be drawn a life more successful, more knowing than our own. Somehow they will do one thing, take one step further, they will see the summit. We believe in it, the radiance that streams from the future, from days we will not see. Children must live, must triumph. Children must die; that is an idea we cannot accept.

You are perfectly entitled to invent your life and to claim that it's true.

Normally, what you’re envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels … almost nonexistent things.