Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.

Argument does not teach children or the immature. Only time and experience does that.

The whole process of writing is a setting at a distance. That is the value of it - to the writer, and to the people who read the results of this process, which takes the raw, the individual, the uncriticized, the unexamined, into the realm of the general.

What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

Nicknames are potent ways of cutting people down to size.

Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.

Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.