“If we marvel at the artist who has written a great book, we must marvel more at those people whose lives are works of art and who don't even know it, who wouldn't believe it if they were told. However hard work good writing may be, it is easier than good living.”

“We lived large in a way that people who really live large don't - there's a spice, a richness, a joy that working-class people have. And even though we were kind of products of misery, we still had a vibrance.”

“Any woman or man who would write the truth of their lives would write a great work. But no one has dared to write the truth of their lives.”

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

“In a very real sense, people who have read good literaturehave lived more than people who cannot or will not read.It is not true that we have only one life to lead; if we can read,we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.”

“To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today that it ever was.”