It is customary for the recipient of this award to offer personal or scholarly comment on the nature and the direction of literature. At this particular time, however, I think it would be well to consider the high duties and the responsibilities of the makers of literature.

It isn't like the rest of the country - it is like a nation itself - more tolerant than the rest in a curious way. Littleness gets swallowed up here. All the viciousness that makes other cities vicious is sucked up and absorbed in New York.

If we could learn even a little to like ourselves, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.

It don't cost money to ask.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.

Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy. I just like to know what your interest is.

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.