All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.
To finish is a sadness to a writer – a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn’t really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them.
I don’t mind getting smacked on the chin. I just don’t want to get nibbled to death. There’s a difference.
A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.
A creative person has to be alive. He can’t borrow from things he’s done in the past. He can’t let his method choose his subjects or his characters. They can’t be warped to fit his style.
Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.
I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.
With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.
The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.
The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.
There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.
How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him – he has known a fear beyond every other.
It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.
Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.
People are felt rather than seen after the first few moments...
Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.
At about 10 o’clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.