In the arts, you simply cannot secure your bread and your freedom of action too. You cannot be a hostile critic of society and expect society to feed you regularly.

Writing, in any sense that matters, cannot be taught. It can only be learned by each separate one of us in his own way, by the use of his own powers of imagination and perception, the ability to learn the lessons he has set for himself.

I will never again attempt to tell any young person what to do - the really gifted don't need advice and the others can't take it.

I want to go and see the world. I want to know the world like the palm of my hand.

If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace.

I get so tired of moral bookkeeping.

The past is never where you think you left it.