We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

Hate is a lack of imagination.

Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.

Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content: the quiet mind is richer than a crown.

People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations

I didn't want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there's a lot of difference.

Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.

When values are deeply embedded within an organization, they seldom change.

There must be a cloud in my head, rain keeps falling from my eyes

Over the past four decades no reporter has critiqued the American South with such evocative sensitivity and bedrock honesty as Curtis Wilkie.

The trick to being happy is getting beyond the body and the astral realms.

I don't associate work with feelings of satisfaction. Rather, guilt, frustration, and resentment of people who write better than I do.

Nothing remains interesting where anything may happen.

Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of them.

Shhhhhh, shhhhhh, says the sea, but I don't believe her.