If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. ... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.

Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent or praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-smoker to his pipe.

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?