Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.

I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one's own body.

Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.

I never liked to hunt, you know. There was always the danger of having a horse fall on you.

I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.

You can write anytime people will leave you alone and not interrupt you.