“Write hard and clear about what hurts.”

“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”

“For God sake write and don't worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what.I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it.”

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”

“In order to write about life first you must live it.”

“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”