Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

...the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.

It was too late - everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water.

When she saw him face to face their eyes met and brushed like birds’ wings. After that everything was all right, everything was wonderful, she knew that he was beginning to fall in love with her.

Prose talent depends on having something to say and an interesting, highly developed way of saying it.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

The history of my life is the history of the struggle between an overwhelming urge to write and a combination of circumstances bent on keeping me from it.