There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.

The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate.

Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?

I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.