People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

It's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there's always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do.

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

In writing, you must kill all your darlings.

I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.