By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of things. His most valuable tools are his sense and his memory; what happens in his mind is primarily pictures.

A teacher enlarges people in all sorts of ways besides just his subject matter.

Youth hasn't got anything to do with chronological age. It's times of hope and happiness.

In a way, it is beautiful to be young and hard up. With the right wife, and I had her, deprivation became a game.

Any life will provide the material for writing, if it is attended to.

To have so little, and it of so little value, was to be quaintly free.

By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of things. His most valuable tools are his sense and his memory; what happens in his mind is primarily pictures.