He was looking at her from behind the smiling that wasn't smiling but was something you were not supposed to see beyond.

The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

We must just stay awake and see evil done for a little while it's not always.

A man. All men. He will pass up a hundred chances to do good for one chance to meddle where meddling is not wanted. He will overlook and fail to see chances, opportunities, for riches and fame and welldoing, and even sometimes for evil. But he won't fail to see a chance to meddle.

My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.

That's the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image.

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