He is thinking quietly: I should not have got out of the habit of prayer.

Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

...and you don't even have to sleep alone, you don't even have to sleep at all; and so, all you have to do is show the stick to the dog now and then and say, 'Thank God for nothing.'

The only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.

'I never feel the need to discuss my work with anyone. No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop.

...It seems hard that a man in his need could be so flouted by a road.

A writer strives to express a universal truth in the way that rings the most bells in the shortest amount of time.