The most important thing about the first sale is for the very first time in your life something written has value and proven value because somebody has given you money for the words that you've written, and that's terribly important, it's a tremendous boon to the ego, to your sense of self-reliance, to your feeling about your own talent.

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.

I don't know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing!

It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.

(on being born on Christmas Day, 1924) I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.

I'm sufficiently independent to know that I can live well and comfortably all the rest of my life whether I'm rejected or not.

I write much better in the nonconfines of the early morning than I do the clutter of the day.