Not too many people work in a job where, waiting out there are three or four hundred people who are paid to tear apart what you've done. And often they are brighter than you are, or they know more about the subject than you do, or they wish they had written a book themselves, or done a lot better. Or they just don't like it! And you have to live with it.

The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

We are never prepared for what we expect.

When this is over, I'm not going to be the same guy. I am going to live as if I were a great man.

If a young aspirant had a modicum of skill and a busy typewriter she or he would sooner or later get a foothold in one of the magazines and a leaping start on the ladder upward.

I've spent my life trying to be better than I was, and I am a brother to all who share the same aspiration.

You have to be eligible for luck to strike, and I think that's a matter of education and preparation, and character and all the other solid attributes that sometimes people laugh at.