People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.

Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.

Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.

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.

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.

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune