When you combine something to say with the skill to say it properly, then you've got a good writer.

Once I had all the facts in, I found I didn't have the immoral courage to pull the caper. So I wrote it as a story. As a teenager, I didn't have any skills for writing as such, so it came out in 1500 words.

Love's a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with.

The story of my very first sale is the fact that I dreamed up a foolproof paper to cheat an insurance company out of several hundred thousand dollars.

You write a story about loneliness, and you grab them all because everybody's an expert on that one.

I quit my job, and went ashore to become a writer.

As far as Im concerned, I didnt dream - ever.