When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.

A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don't matter a damn anymore.

A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best.

You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?

There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.

Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.