People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.

Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama . . . . Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe.

It is hard to make your adversaries real people unless you recognize yourself in them - in which case, if you don't watch out, they cease to be adversaries.

You can't clobber any reader while he's looking. You divert his attention, then you clobber him and he never knows what hit him.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories it is something organic, something that grows out of the material, and this being the case, it is different for every story of any account that has ever been written.

Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.