If only I had a wife!" I used to think, "who could stay home and keep the children happy, why I could support six of them. A cinch.

Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.

I know that we live after death and again and again, not in the memory of our children, or as a mulch for trees and flowers, however poetic that may be, but looking passionately and egocentrically out of our eyes.

You must become aware of the richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there, so that you can write opulently and with self-trust. If you once become aware of it and have faith in it, you will be all right.

Orthodox criticism ... is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the first ones to get killed off.

Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it.

The imagination needs moodling,--long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.