Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species. --speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962

Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans

Americans are much more American than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners ... California Chinese, Boston Irish, Wisconsin German, yes, Alabama Negroes, have more in common than they have apart ... The American identity is an exact and provable thing.

There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.

Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain.

I don’t mind getting smacked on the chin. I just don’t want to get nibbled to death. There’s a difference.

That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.