English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.

I think a writer is not an ideal husband... Writers tend to get off into their own heads and not notice the people that they're living with, or they get irritable with the people that they're living with when the people insist on being noticed.

The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs'.

I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.

Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th.

People may think of Southern humor in terms of missing teeth and outhouse accidents, but the best of it is a rich vein running through the best of Southern literature.

If a cat spoke, it would say things like, 'Hey, I don't see the problem here.'