It feels almost soft, like something to be caressed. Only gold feels that way.

It's not when you realize that nothing can help you — religion, pride, anything — it's when you realize that you don't need any aid.

Try to be better than yourself.

A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can.

We could live like counts. ... If all that money is out there, I might as well hack a little on the side and put the novel off.

I knew that nobody but a luckless man could ever need a doctor in the face of a cyclone.

When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.