American Quotes

I abhor a hoe. I am fond of flowers but not of dirt, and had rather buy them than cultivate them.

Every life is march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.

Patience is passion tamed.

A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice- but as yet unstained.

Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.

The nicest notes I've received from readers are those that tell me I've gotten them back into reading for entertainment. For me, there is no greater compliment.

No one forces me, or any other writer, to sell a film option on the books. If you don't want to run the risk that the filmmakers may adapt your work in a way you don't like, then you don't sell the option. You know when you sell it that they will have to make some changes, just because film and TV a

It's not at all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book. If I do that well, I feel, good tidings generally will

I want to be a writer you can always depend on for a good read during your vacation, during your flight, during a time in your life when you want to forget the world around you.

I outline in some detail, but even after the outline is done I often get a new idea that is an improvement, so the outline is a living, breathing thing as well. I also re-outline when I'm two-thirds done, to be sure that there is an emotional payoff from all the plot lines and to be sure the story i

I do think Austin is a great town for writers; we have a lot of them here. But I grew up in Austin, and so I didn't move here because it was a creative mecca; I was just lucky to live here.

I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.

When they talk of ghosts of the dead who wander in the night with things still undone in life, they approximate my subjective experience of this life.

When I'm forced by circumstances to be in a crowd of prisoners, it's all I can do to refrain from attack.

To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there.

There was never sufficient evidence presented at my trial to support a finding of intent to kill.

The other inmates stand in a long straight line, flanked by guards, and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them, because they will not run - will not try to escape.

One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.

My eyes, my brain seek out escape routes wherever I am sent.

I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison.

I find it painful and angering to look in a mirror.

I escaped one time. In 1971 I was in the free world for six weeks.

The part of me which wanders through my mind and never sees or feels actual objects, but which lives in and moves through my passions and my emotions, experiences this world as a horrible nightmare.

That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.

Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.

Nothing is over and done with. Nothing. Not even your malice.

Imagine a thousand more such daily intrusions in your life, every hour and minute of every day, and you can grasp the source of this paranoia, this anger that could consume me at any moment if I lost control.

I have been desperate to escape for so many years now, it is routine for me to try to escape.

As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing.

Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent - something like an infant - deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer.