I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?

I agree that one can't dispense with the reins and the whip altogether, for knaves find their way even into literature, but no thinking will discover a better police for literature than the critics and the author's own conscience.

Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.

To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

A tree is beautiful, but what's more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples' character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe. ... What a terrible future!

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.