We are too ready (women especially) not to stand by what we have said or done.

If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say: 'Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!' you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.

Advertising companies hire the very brightest, wittiest young people to write for them. Not one single sentence of it is worth repeating. Why? Because it wasn't meant.

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

So remember these two things: you are talented and you are original. Be sure of that. I say this because self-trust is one of the very most important things in writing.

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,--making us think of funnier and funnier things.

When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.