A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.

Frederick Buechner can find grace and redemption even in the shoddiest, phoniest aspects of a cultural wasteland. One reads Lion Country...with hope and delight.

I think Shakespeare got drunk after he finished King Lear. That he had a ball writing it.

Novels must have verisimilitude, and truth has little enough of that.

The only thing that keeps a man going is energy. And what is energy but liking life?

We were not as rich as the Rockefellers or Mellons, but we were rich enough to know how rich they were.

There is a charm, even for homely things, in perfect maintenance.