I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light and air abot me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would only be sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass.

The sincerity of feeling that is possible between a writer and a reader is one of the finest things I know.

A child's attitude toward everything is an artist's attitude.

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

A soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.

Many people seem to think that art is a luxury to be imported and tacked on to life. Art springs out of the very stuff that life is made of. Most of our young authors start to write a story and make a few observations from nature to add local color. The results are invariably false and hollow. Art must spring out of the fullness and richness of life.

The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.