Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.

Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.

Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.

The fish is my friend too...I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky; he thought

Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.

If a writer stops observing he is finished. But he does not have to observe consciously nor think how it will be useful. Perhaps that would be true at the beginning. But later everything he sees goes into the great reserve of things he knows or has seen.

In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector.