'I never feel the need to discuss my work with anyone. No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.

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.

War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of a war is to end the war.

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 writer doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper.