To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new. Even Matisse painted some of his Fauvist pictures in anxiety. Maybe that helped him to simplify. Character, discipline, negative capability count. Write, complete, revise. If it doesn't work, begin something else.

If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

Nationality isn't soul.

Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.

For misery don't blame God. He gives the food but we cook it.