It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

The wind is us-- it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.

Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can't have too many friends because then you're just not really friends.

Gasping for breath, the body still battling for life.

Lively, too. Talky as a jaybird. With something smart to say on every subject: better than the radio.

When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.

I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.