It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.
You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood, do you, sir?
Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.
Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.
I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.