Well, Bud," he said, looking at me, "I'll be damned if you don't go to a lot of trouble to have your fun. Kidnapping, then fighting. What do you do on your holidays? Burn houses?

The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The quality an artist must have is objectivity in judging his work, plus the honesty and courage not to kid himself about it.

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

This does not matter. This is not anything yet. It all depends on what you do with it, afterward.

It wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand $30,000.

What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died.