“He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”

“Point is, dammit, nobody don't have no damn right to tell a body who he can love and who he can't.”

“[Credit is a system whereby] a person who can't pay, gets another person who can't pay, to guarantee that he can pay.”

“A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it; an amateur is one who can't when he does feel like it. ”

“I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.”

“He respects owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right.”