When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and is it is cool and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit again.

First, there must be talent. . .Then there must be discipline. . .Then there must be. . .and absolute conscience. . .to prevent faking.

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.

You are all a lost generation. [with credit to Gertrude Stein]

For what are we born if not to aid one another?

We're always lucky,' I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood.

How would that premise stand up if he examined it? That was probably why the Communists were always cracking down on Bohemiansism. When you were drunk or when you committed adultery you recognised your own personal fallability of that so mutable substitute for the apostles' creed, the party line. Down with Bohemianism, the sin of Majakowski.