She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.

A home is not a museum. It doesn't have to be furnished with Picasso paintings, or Sheraton suites, or Oriental rugs, or Chinese pottery. But it does have to be furnished with things that mean something to you.

A guitar has moonlight in it.

Love, when you get fear in it, it's not love any more. It's hate.

I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.

Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.

They threw me off the haytruck about noon.

If you have to do it, you can do it.

If you can't write like New York, you have no business living in New York and making New York the locale of your stories.

Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.