Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.

Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.

If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.

Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.

If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.

Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.

What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.