If your language is confused, your intellect, if not your whole character, will almost certainly correspond.

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

You can see the meaning of the statement that "Literature is a living art" most easily and clearly, perhaps, by contrasting Science and Art at their two extremes - say Pure Mathematics and Acting. Science as a rule deals with things, Art with man's thought and emotion about things.

I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse's lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation.

If your language is confused, your intellect, if not your whole character, will almost certainly correspond.

We make our discoveries through our mistakes: we watch one another's success: and where there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve.