Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.

Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.