Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.
New York is the only real city-city.
I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.
A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.
No one will ever know what ‘In Cold Blood’ took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.
The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface.
Reading dreams. That’s what started her walking down the road. Every day she’d walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.
A work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic; everything else is either arithmetic or biology.
If a man doesn’t like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn’t like either of them, well, I’m in trouble anyway: he don’t like girls.
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
I will say only that all a writer has to work with is the material he has gathered as the result of his own endeavor and observations, and he cannot be denied the right to use it. Condemn, but not deny.
A man who doesn’t dream is like a man who doesn’t sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.
You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.
Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.
Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.
Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc – it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.
It’s better to look at the sky than live there.
The wind is us – it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.
Nancy clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that is the definition of a lady.
Well, I’m about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.