So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world.

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

The impulse of the American woman to geld her husband and castrate her sons is very strong.

It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.

You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.

...to find where you are going, you must know where you are.

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.