I am somebody. I am me. And I don't need anybody to make me somebody.

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.

The thieves and killers are goin' to have guns, so if the honest men don't have 'em they just make it easier for the vicious.

The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.

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.

I wonder why it is the man who pleads for mercy never gives it.

Revenge could steal a man's life until there was nothing left but emptiness.