This is reality, whether you like it or not--all those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.

A creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

Success is never so interesting as struggle

The prayers of all good people are good.

The emptiness was intense, like the stillness in a great factory when the machinery stops running.

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off.

Nothing mattered ... but writing books, and living the kind of life that made it possible to write them.