Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.

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.

I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.

A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.

You write by sitting down and writing. There's no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he's disciplined, doesn't matter.

Writers who can't invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn't paint people, so he painted chairs.

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.