Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.

There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.

Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.

Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.

Much of my writing has taken the form of a pilgrimage: to sacred places that represent the best of America, to musicians and other artists who represent the best of their art.

No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief

A writer is always working.