My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I had loved her very much.

Fear comes with middle age.

Writers are interesting people, but often mean and petty.

failure in the theater is more public, more brilliant, more unreal than in any other field.

Like all former thinkers, I'm writing a book.

Haven't you lived in the South long enough to know that nothing is ever anybody's fault?

Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter 'repented', changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.