The primary subject of fiction is and has always been human emotion, values, and beliefs.

To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write [...] so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write [...] so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living. The true artist [...] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful--

Great things happen nationally when topmost leadership is goaded and supported from below.

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.