[In art] you are telling the reader or the listener or the viewer something he already knows but which he doesn't quite know that he knows, so that in the action of communication he experiences a recognition, a feeling that he has been there before, a shock of recognition.

I couldn't stand it. I still can't stand it. I can't stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age.

Ooooh," Kate groans, Kate herself now. "I'm so afraid." "I know." "What am I going to do?" "You mean right now?" "Yes." "We'll go to my car. Then we'll drive down to the French Market and get some coffee. Then we'll go home." "Is everything going to be all right?" "Yes." "Tell me. Say it." "Everything is going to be all right.

I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.

The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.

In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.

Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.