You make your own luck, Gig. You know what makes a good loser? Practice.

Develop a built-in bullshit detector.

He remembered poor Julian [actually F. Scott Fitzgerald] and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, "The very rich are different from you and me." And how someone had said to Julian, "Yes, they have more money."

Everyone behaves badly--given the chance.

One battle doesn't make a campagin, but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole war.

He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any many could have.

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.