I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.

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.

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors.