In my early twenties, that's when I really began to write. Before that, I was too busy working, keeping myself going.

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

When there's a terrible murder people who are interviewed say, 'This has always been a quiet neighborhood.' That is so dumb and uninformed! The earth is not a quiet neighborhood. There isn't anyplace that's a quiet neighborhood. People are asking themselves how to stay neat in the cyclone.

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

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.

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

In my early twenties, that's when I really began to write. Before that, I was too busy working, keeping myself going.