You can lie to your wife or your boss, but you cannot lie to your typewriter. Sooner or later you must reveal your true self in your pages.

All you have the right to ask of life is to choose a battle in this war, make the best you can, and leave the field with honor.

After all, the only thing that is going to save mankind is if enough people live their lives for something or someone other than themselves.

To me, a writer is one of the most important soldiers in the fight for survival of the human race. He must stay at his post in the thick of fire to serve the cause of mankind.

My first book was rejected nine times. It turned out to be a best seller, Battle Cry? in 1953.

Often we have no time for our friends but all the time in the world for our enemies.

Why must we fight for the right to live, over and over, each time the sun rises?

You aren't a true husband/man until you've done the work of a wife/women

I was too heavy to be a jockey and too honest to be a producer, so I became a writer

The ability of a person to atone has always been the most remarkable of human features.

A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic, yet it seems like it's a great secret.

She was the curator of her marriage, collector of swift quotes and unremarked-upon sensations.

Affectation hath always had a greater share both in the action and discourse of men than truth and judgment have.

The Canadian voice is still too rustic.

My thing about having another child was, time's-a-wasting!

The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.

I didn't invent hot water. But when I approach menswear, I do it in a very honest way. And my menswear and womenswear are very similar, in the sense that I put men in leggings and lace shirts.

Writers vary tremendously. Was it Tom Wolfe who stood up or was it [Ernest] Hemingway who had to stand up? I don't know.

I'll see you.' He grinned. 'Not if i see you first.

After that I didn't listen to music as much because '70s music just wasn't... I remember all the songs, but it wasn't because I was into them, you know what I mean?

In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start.