I was not a writer to begin with; I was a listener.

Many Southern writers must have learned the art of storytelling from listening to oral tales. I did. It gave me the knowledge that the simplest incident can make a story.

Influence is a very tenuous matter. I try to avoid it in every respect. I don't want to be influenced by anybody.

To me there is no such thing as creative writing. It's either good writing, whatever the subject, or it's not creative.

I'm not interested in plots. I'm interested only in the characterization of people and what they do.

You don't love Buck. If you did, you'd have four kids by now. Wouldn't you? Now wouldn't you? A woman like you...

Explore the extent of love.

So unsirious work... I behave nice because I want people to behave in the same way with me.

Whatever is on your plate got there because you said yes to it.

Being sexy doesn't mean you shouldn't be safe.

It's strange, because Long Island is still New York, but the farther you go out on Long Island, the more creepy it gets.

For a while they stood there, like men on the edge of a sleep where nightmare lurks, holding it off, though they know that they can only come to morning through the shadows.

Smoking cigarettes seems to alarm peace activists much more than voting for Reagan does.

A Warrior knows that a great dream is made up of many different things, just as the light from the sun is the sum of its millions of rays.

What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?

Trying to be able to have, let's say, more than three partners was absolutely impossible, at least for my own relationships.