Write what you love and love what you write.

Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating, by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer's make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road he wants to go. I would only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.

You've been put on the world to love the act of being alive.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

I don't need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.