Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.

Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar.

The writer in America isn't part of the culture of this country. He's like a fine dog. People like him around, but he's of no use.

When ideas come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't.

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.

It always takes a man that never made much at any thing to tell you how to run your business, though. Like these college professors without a whole pair of socks to his name, telling you how to make a million in ten years, and a woman that couldn't even get a husband can always tell you how to raise a family.

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