If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.
Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.
If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much – make it greedy, miserable and sick.
Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.
Texas is not a state – it’s a state of mind.
A wife is like a children’s movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete.
They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.
I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.
Charley is a mind-reading dog. There have been many trips in his lifetime, and often he has to be left at home. He knows we are going long before the suitcase has come out, and he paces and worries and whines and goes into a state of mild hysteria.
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.
The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.
A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.
And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.
Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art of living.
Failure is a state of mind. It’s like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world, of all living things.
I had been practicing for the Depression a long time. I wasn’t involved with loss. I didn’t have money to lose, but in common with millions I did dislike hunger and cold.
I have wondered why is it that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death that others.
I think bullfights are for men who aren’t very brave and wish they were.