Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.

When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.

Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family

Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.

I had spent years thinking about one thing while I was doing another. I had, in fact, prided myself on being able to do two things at once.

The body, the mind, and the spirit don't form a pyramid, they form a circle. Each of them runs into the other two. The body isn't below the mind and the spirit; from the point of view it's between them. if you reside too much in the mind, then you get too abstract and cut off from the world. You long for the spiritual life, but you can't get to it, and you fall into despair. The exercise of the senses frees you from abstraction and opens the way to transcendence.

How will you know a good farmer when you meet him? He will not ask you for any favors.