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.

I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

If football players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.

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.