Do you understand how there could be any writing in a spider's web?" "Oh, no," said Dr. Dorian. "I don't understand it. But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle." "What's miraculous about a spider's web?" said Mrs. Arable. "I don't see why you say a web is a miracle-it's just a web." "Ever try to spin one?" asked Dr. Dorian.

An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.

The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.

A man must have something to cling to. Without that he is as a pea vine sprawling in search of a trellis.... I was all asprawl, clinging to Beauty, which is a very restless trellis.

It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn't catch the remark because I wasn't paying attention.

Humor is like a frog. You can dissect it to see how it works, but by then, it's dead.

All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.