Anyone who says he wants to be a writer and isn't writing, doesn't.

The writer's job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.

When you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.

You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity.