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

“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.”

“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”

“English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.”

“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.”

“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.”