I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.

A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts.

When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.

The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.

The work is with me when I wake up in the morning; it is with me while I eat my breakfast in bed and run through the newspaper, while I shave and bathe and dress.

Novel writing wrecks homes.

Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor.

A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted.

Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

I'd rather be in trouble for having done something than for not having done anything.

I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them.

Being ready is everything.

Whatever is within your limit, do it to lift the souls of humankind.

of the few certainties I've come across in life, one of them is that when a person says money is no object, the opposite is most likely true. Money is the only object—or will be.

I may be forty but every morning when I get up I feel like a twenty-year-old. Unfortunately there's never one around.

It's about strengthening the relationship and the bond of parent to child.

There is not one square inch of the entire creation about which Jesus does not cry out, 'This is mine!'

It's really difficult to know what is the best way forward when you're not getting a lot of support - and probably most writers aren't getting enough support.

The security of faith does not make us motionless or close us off, but sends us forth to bear witness and to dialogue with all people.

Everything that I have is natural - braid, nails - I practically never use cosmetics. They often ask me in the provinces about my braid.