Texas is not a state - it's a state of mind.

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.

Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.

I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.

Socialism never took root in America.

Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.

You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don' know what he looks like.