When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

I was as afraid as the next man in my time and maybe more so. But with the years, fear had come to be regarded as a form of stupidity to be classed with overdrafts, acquiring a venereal disease or eating candies. Fear is a child's vice and while I loved to feel it approach, as one does with any vice, it was not for grown men and the only thing to be afraid of was the presence of true and imminent danger in a form that you should be aware of and not be a fool if you were responsible for others.

Fish," he said softly, aloud, "I'll stay with you until I am dead.

You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.

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.

Courage is grace under pressure.

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.