Kill if you will, but command me nothing!

I've given up thinking - it keeps getting me into trouble.

I don't want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world and opted for the Home Shopping Network instead), but there was a view among the student writers I knew at that time that good writing came spontaneously, in an uprush of feeling that had to be caught at once; when you were building that all-important stairway to heaven, you couldn't just stand around with your hammer in your hand.

I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.

As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty.

How else could he go on, except with merciful incomprehension held before him like a shield? How could anyone?

When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.