you got to want it to be good, and I don't want it.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Still, when all is said, somewhere one must belong: even the soaring falcon returns to its master's wrist.

Are the dead as lonesome as the living?

Intelligence alone can't make a good writer and style alone can't make a good writer - that is, not a really important or significant writer - but the two things together make a really good writer.

Those fellows, they're always crying over killers. Never a thought for the victims.

I knew Lee Harvey Oswald, and I knew Jack Kennedy. The odds against that-one person knowing all four of those men-must be astounding.