If you sweep a house, and tend its fires and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing this, then you and that house are married, that house is yours.

All writing, all art, is an act of faith. If one tries to contribute to human understanding, how can that be called decadent? It's like saying a declaration of love is an act of decadence. Any work of art, provide it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.

I'm not a philosopher.

Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action, maybe that’s why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden.

First, a gorgeous breakfast: just everything you can imagine from flapjacks and fried squirrel to hominy grits and honey in the comb...we're so impatient to get at the presents we can't eat a mouthful.

No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.

A man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.