A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.
Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.
Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

























