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

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

“Very fine law,” said Stuart. “When I am Chairman, anybody who is mean to anybody else is going to catch it.”

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

“Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.... Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.”

“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.”

“As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly and unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost.”