“But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.”

My objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me. I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse.

Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.

Things are always better in the morning.

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women – black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.

As a reader I loathe introductions…Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.

Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.

I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don’t think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, ‘I’m probably no better than you, but I’m certainly your equal.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Things are never as bad as they seem.

We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.

But the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

Forgive yourself for what you have dreamed of yourself & what you have become.

We either die or live for something. And between those two there is only love.

Goodbyes are necessary, my child. They change us, because they’re meant to.

There is no exquisite beauty, without some strangeness in the proportion.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

I truly believe that we amount to what we contribute to the world, But lately, everyone seems more concerned with taking.