When at the typewriter I am no longer where I site but am away across the mountains, in ancient cities or on the Great Plains among the buffalo. Often I think of what pitiful fools are those who use mind-altering drugs to seek feelings they do not have, each drug taking a little more from what they have of mind, leaving them a little less. Give the brain encouragement from study, from thinking, from visualizing, and no drugs are needed.

The fact of the matter is that poor men do not often steal, and when they do, it is petty theft, something to eat or perhaps an item of clothing to keep them from the cold. Thieves are usually those who have something and want more.

If you want to be creative, go where your questions lead you.

Carryin' a gun is a chancy thing. Sooner or later a man is put in a position to use it. And a body has to figure that if somebody packs iron he plans to use it when the time comes; and if he draws it out, he plans to shoot.

This-this was what made life: a moment of quiet, the water falling in the fountain, the girl's voice. . . a moment of captured beauty. Those who are truly wise will never permit such moments to escape.

Knowledge is awareness, and to it there are many paths, not all of them paved with logic.

A writer's brain is like a magician's hat. If you're going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first.