He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure.

I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.

Never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

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

One cat just leads to another." [Letter from Finca Vigia, Cuba, to his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1943).]

I don't like to leave anything,' the man said. 'I don't like to leave things behind.