Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.

Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue.

Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth.

People read fiction for emotion-not information

She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.