He saw the girl watching him and he smiled at her. It was an old smile that he had been using for fifty years, ever since he first smiled.

Sometimes you know the story. Sometimes you make it up as you go along and have no idea how it will come out.

For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

I decided to stop drinking with creeps. I decided to drink only with friends. I've lost 30 pounds.

I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

The best way is to read it all every day from the start, correcting as you go along, then go on from where you stopped the day before. When it gets so long that you can't do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start. That's how you make it all of one piece.

I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)