I suppose there is something in all of us that harks back to the soil. When you come to think of it, what are picnics but outcroppings of instinct? No one really enjoys them or expects to enjoy them, but with the first warm days some prehistoric instinct takes us out into the woods, to fry potatoes over a strangling wood fire or spend the next week getting grass stains out of our clothes. It must be instinct; every atom of intelligence warns us to stay at home near the refrigerator.

There is a point at which curiosity becomes unbearable, when it becomes an obsession, like hunger.

The one pleasure that never palls is the pleasure of not going to church.

The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.

Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

Enemies are an indication of character.

A cat and a Bible, and nobody needs to be lonely.