He never fell, never slipped back, never flew.

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

I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.

They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.

Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

The break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.