Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.

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.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. Why do kids play football? They can get hurt on any play, can't they? Yet they can't wait until Saturday comes around so they can play on the high school team, or the college team, and get smashed around. Writing is like that. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it!

The writer works in a lonely way.

Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own