“Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.”

“If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.”

“I hate writing, I love having written.”

“I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.”

“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

“Travel, trouble, music, art, a kiss, a frock, a rhyme --I never said they feed my heart, but still they pass my time.”

“To keep something, you must take care of it. More, you must understand just what sort of care it requires. You must know the rules and abide by them. She could do that. She had been doing it all the months, in the writing of her letters to him. There had been rules to be learned in that matter, and the first of them was the hardest: never say to him what you want him to say to you. Never tell him how sadly you miss him, how it grows no better, how each day without him is sharper than the day before. Set down for him the gay happenings about you, bright little anecdotes, not invented, necessarily, but attractively embellished. Do not bedevil him with the pinings of your faithful heart because he is your husband, your man, your love. For you are writing to none of these. You are writing to a soldier.”