Skip to content

Here is hard-core unemployment, widespread and chronic; here is a region of shacks and hovels for housing; here are cliffs and ravines without standing room for a cow or chickens. In this region of steep mountains, a person is exceptionally fortunate if he is able to hack out two or three ten-foot rows of land for potatoes or beans.

— Erskine Caldwell Around about America (1964)

Another quote →

More quotes by Erskine Caldwell

To me there is no such thing as creative writing. It's either good writing, whatever the subject, or it's not creative.

Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988)

I'm not interested in plots. I'm interested only in the characterization of people and what they do.

Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988)

"All you boys seem to think about is the things you can see and touch—that ain’t living. It’s the things you can feel inside of you—that’s what living is made for."

God's Little Acre (1933)

I was not a writer to begin with; I was a listener.

Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988)

Many Southern writers must have learned the art of storytelling from listening to oral tales. I did. It gave me the knowledge that the simplest incident can make a story.

Conversations with Erskine Caldwell (1988)

All Erskine Caldwell quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Erskine Caldwell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.