A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.

Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art of living.

I carry a gun cause a cop is too heavy.

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.

In my heart there may be doubt that I deserve the Nobel award over other men of letters whom I hold in respect and reverence, but there is no question of my pleasure and pride in having it for myself.

It is my experience that in some areas [my poodle] Charley is more intelligent that I am, but in others he is abysmally ignorant. He can't read, can't drive a car, and has no grasp of mathematics. But in his own field of endeavor, which he is now practicing, the slow, imperial smelling over and anointing on an area, he has no peer. Of course his horizons are limited, but how wide are mine?

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.