My father brought me a box of books once when I was about three and a half or four. I remember the carton they were in and the covers with illustrations by Newell C. Wyeth.

My first job was working in a dress shop in Los Angeles in 1940, for $7 a week.

When I begin a story at my desk, the window to my back, the path is not there. As I start to walk, I make the path.

A good novel begins with a small question and ends with a bigger one.

The truth came slowly like a story told by people interrupting each other.

I've always known a lot of very bad people, destructive, brutes of a certain kind. Then I've seen these lovely impulses and what not, and they've stayed with me and comforted me.

Literature is the province of imagination, and stories, in whatever guise, are meditations on life.