Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.

If you go back to before mankind came out of the cave, there was hatred.

Your attitude is everything. Believe in yourself and trust your material. To be a successful writer, write every single day where you feel like it or not. Never, never give up, and the world will reward you beyond your wildest dreams.

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.

I tell younger writers that indeed it is devastating to be rejected. You feel like the bottom dropped out of your world.

But then, as far as I know, as far as I've studied or heard or picked up, it seems that this type of thing is a curse against mankind.

I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.