The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since.

He [the writer] must, teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and compassion and sacrifice. See Poets & Writers

The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.

My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.

Gettysburg. . . . You cant understand it. You would have to be born there.

Let the past abolish the past when -- and if -- it can substitute something better.

People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.