Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again.

Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.

Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid. Ain't nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.

A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.

Dear God, let me be damned a little longer, a little while.

Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.

The most important thing is insight, that is to be - curious - to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.