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

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

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.

A guitar has moonlight in it.

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.

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

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.

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

They threw me off the haytruck about noon.

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.