The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

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.

I think that-that anyone, the painter, the musician, the writer works in a-a kind of an-an insane fury. He's demon-driven. He can get up feeling rotten, with a hangover, or with-with actual pain, and-and if he gets to work, the first thing he knows, he don't remember that pain, that hangover-he's too busy.

The only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.

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.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station….

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.