A writer strives to express a universal truth in the way that rings the most bells in the shortest amount of time.

I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail...because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

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

The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.

I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.

And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless october, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dog and the echo of louis' voice dying away