As long as a man stays alive he can't tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.

Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.

Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.

There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go - if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.