Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing

Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.

Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.