You ask me why I spend my life writing? Do I find entertainment? Is it worthwhile? Above all, does it pay? If not, then, is there a reason?... I write only because there is a voice within me. That will not be still.

The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life.

Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.

I hate Technicolor. Everybody in a Technicolor movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction.

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.

What is so real as the cry of a child? A rabbit's cry may be wilder But it has no soul.

Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements.