I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

'He's got a can up there,' Richard said.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed

When you know a friend is there you do not go to see him. Then he's gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.

On all levels American society is rigged. I am troubled by the cynical immorality of my country. It cannot survive on this basis.