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

“Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”

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

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

“The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.”

“[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.”