Summer is a discouraging time to work - you don't feel death coming on the way it does in the fall when the boys really put pen to paper.

Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.

It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.

Having books published is very destructive to writing.

Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish.

But you always fall for somebody else and then it's all right. Fall for them but don't let them ruin you.