We should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role.

When you will, make a resolution, set your jaw, you are expressing an imaginative fear that you won't do the thing. If you knew you would do the thing, you would smile happily and set about it. And this fear (since the imagination is always creative) comes about presently and you slide down into the complete slump of several weeks or years - the very thing you dreaded and set your jaw against.

No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.

Your motto: Be Bold, Be Free, Be Truthful.

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.

It is so conceited and timid to be ashamed of one's mistakes. Of course they are mistakes. Go on to the next.

Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.