Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.

You're broke, eh?" I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.

Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.

The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.

When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.

There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.