A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

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.

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

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.

I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.

Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time.

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless.