The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good.

The woman went on. She had not looked back. She went out of sight up the road: swollen, slow, deliberate, unhurried, and tireless as augmenting afternoon itself. She walked out of their talking too; perhaps out of their minds too.

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.