I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can't go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.

He used to tell me, 'Do what you like to do. It'll probably turn out to be what you do best.

In fiction I think we should have no agenda but to tell the truth.

Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.

You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time.

Faith can reclaim deserts as well as move mountains.

If you're going to get old, you might as well get as old as you can get.