It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret.

In every writer there is a certain amount of the scavenger.

Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

I do not rewrite unless I am absolutely sure that I can express the material better if I do rewrite it.

I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.

History is not was, it is.

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.