“It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.”

“One lost an IQ point for every year spent on the West Coast”

“If you sweep a house, and tend its fires and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing this, then you and that house are married, that house is yours.”

“Unfortunately, one mirror is as treacherous as another, reflecting at some point in every adventure the same vain unsatisfied face, and so when she asks what have I done? she means really what am I doing? as one usually does.”

“If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it. . . . for me, every act of art is the act of solving a mystery.”

“As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.”

“I knew Faulkner very well. He was a great friend of mine. Well, as much as you could be a friend of his, unless you were a fourteen-year-old nymphet. Then you could be a great friend!”