The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey.

I love memoirs, particularly obscure ones because the writer is usually a regular guy just telling what happened to him and to his friends. What these tales lack in artfulness they make up for in passion and authenticity. For a writer of fiction, they are solid gold. I have stolen so much from memoirs it's ridiculous.

Persian envoy "our arrows will black out the sun..." Dienekes of the Spartans.."Good, then we'll fight in the shade.

When you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.

It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.

Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue.

You have never tasted freedom, friend, or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.