“Writing fiction is ... an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.”

“Making the best of things is a damn poor way of dealing with them. My life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.”

“Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.”

“Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.”

“The greatest good to the greatest number will obviously be reached when each individual of the greatest number is doing the greatest good to himself.”

“If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good”

“....and his head and shoulders were on the bed next to the boy who had captured his heart like cupped hands would capture a butterfly, and had never, ever clutched him too tight and never let him go.”