It would be a fallacy to deduce that the slow writer necessarily comes up with superior work. There seems to be scant relationshipbetween prolificness and quality.

Crushed to earth and rising again is an author's gymnastic. Once he fails to struggle to his feet and grab his pen, he will contemplate a fact he should never permit himself to face: that in all probability books have been written, are being written, will be written, better than anything he has done, is doing, or will do.

I loathe all this blind rushing pell-mell into a struggle arranged by the mighty minority and paid for with the lives of young men who are drugged on trumped-up ideals.

Few enjoy noisy overcrowded functions. But they are a gesture of goodwill on the part of host or hostess, and also on the part of guests who submit to them.

The creative writer is usually captive to his next book.

Charm is an odorless perfume, which cannot be anchored in the chemists' test tube. It is a permeation, a radiation. It emanates from the climate of a warm human spirit, which not only contains light, but gives it off.

Isn't success ridiculously easy, once it begins to succeed? ... after the strain and sweat and pushing until the very groins of your being shrieked protest, something like momentum happened. It took your wits and your concentration and your continued willing sweat, of course, to keep it going, but the success of success had ball bearings.