I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.

Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

How to Draw a Picture (XII) Know when you're finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life.

And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you're inside.

Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it.

It's only a little secret, but having a secret makes me feel better. Like a human being again.