“A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.”

“An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.”

“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”

“[Writers] should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.”

“Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.”

“There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.”

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.”