Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

Any fiction should be a story. In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and the fact that in the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn't a story.

Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens

They tell you that you'll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don't tell you is that you won't miss it very much.

Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.

In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do - if he has to write, why then, he writes; and if he doesn't feel the urgent need of writing, there are dozens of professions in which it is easier to earn a comfortable living.

A man rising in the world is not concerned with history; he is too busy making it. But a citizen with a fixed place in the community wants to acquire a glorious past just as he acquires antique furniture. By that past he is reassured of his present importance; in it he finds strength to face the dangers that lie in front of him.