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

You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

As a writer I have persisted in my uncertainty, alternating between novels which could charitably be considered literature and world reporting which by another stretch of objective standards might be called history.

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 am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.