Forget grief. Only an idiot has no grief, and only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?

Listen: it’s got to be all honeymoon, always.
Either heaven, or hell:
no comfortable safe peaceful purgatory between
for you and me to wait in until good behavior or forbearance
or shame or repentance overtakes us.

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that or not.

[Press conference, University of Virginia, May 20, 1957]

I don't want to be a cheerleader. I am not happy and I am not a leader. I'm much more similar to a depressed follower.

It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.