Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

Obvious enough that generalities work to protect the mind from the great outdoors; is it possible that this was in fact their first purpose?

Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.

That so much of our experience, or the stereotype which passes for it should be dealt with by means of the short story is perhaps a symptom not unnoticeable elsewhere in the public domain of an unlovely cynicism about human character.