To make war all you need is intelligence. But to win you need talent and material.

Write the story, take out all the good lines, and see if it still works.

What I learned constructive about women, not just ethics like never blame them if they pox you because somebody poxed them and lots of times they don't even know they have it — that's in the first reader for squares — is, no matter how they get, always think of them the way they were on the best day they ever had.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

My only regret in life is that I did not drink more wine.

You write a book like that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like pissing in your father's beer.