The rules seem to be these: If you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. But nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.

...when men ignite in their hearts a religious fury, they inflict at the same time a blindness on their eyes.

I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?

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.

On 24 October 1944 Planet Earth was following its orbit about the sun as it has obediently done for nearly five billion years.