Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early 'forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.

I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends.

We wait always for something that does not come.

If the wind rises it can push us against the flood when it comes.

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.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.