Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?

There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it.

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love.

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the goddamn way with what matters.

Let him think is I am more man than I am and I will be so.