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

“Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”

“Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.”

“I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”

“Don't write about Man; write about a man.”

“I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular.”

“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.”