When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous.

Never write about a place until you're away from it, because it gives you perspective. Immediately after you've seen something you can give a photographic description of it and make it accurate. That's good practice, but it isn't creative writing.

[Never give up hope. Never give in to pessimism. Never despair.] No horse named Morbid ever won a race!

And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.

I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

Why must all of the operations in life be performed without an anesthetic?

That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.