“When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.”

“It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.”

“Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.”

“During my sixteen years as a teacher of writing, I removed many adverbs and adverbial phrases from students' writing. I decided long ago that a writer who needlessly modifies words is either a nervous writer who does not believe in the worth of what they are writing or a vain writer who wants to be seen as discriminating and sensitive to nuances or meaning.”

“God made his creation in his Image he meant for them to be perfect a work of perfection but Adam and Eve broke gods law and sin came to be this is where sin comes from people disrespecting peoples wishes and people killing lieing hurting. Killing people inside to where they can't take it and cut themselves or hurt themselfs god meant for us to be perfect well are we now?”

“ Yudenow was a controlled panic of self-preservation on two uncertain legs; abject slave to a mad desire for what beasts know as blind survival. A comical beast, I thought, but asked myself, 'Why prolong mere living for its own sake?' The question answered itself: 'Because a beast is blind.' In Yudenow's case, he was animated by nothing but a terror of Nothing, a horror of ceasing to be; by a hopeless desire to evade consequence and issue, parry cause and duck effect. But he had - and you can read it in the faces of defeated fighters, doglike to the verge of tears in the outer offices - the hope-against-hope that, by fiddling and scraping against all the odds of the world, his ringcraft might outmaneuver the inevitable. And do you know what? There is the Spirit of Man in this - good, bad, or indifferent, a certain heroism.”

“At length the Turk turned to Larry:'You write, I believe?' he said with complete lack of interest.Larry's eyes glittered. Mother, seeing the danger signs, rushed in quickly before he could reply.'Yes, yes' she smiled, 'he writes away, day after day. Always tapping at the typewriter''I always feel that I could write superbly if I tried' remarked the Turk.'Really?' said Mother. 'Yes, well, it's a gift I suppose, like so many things.''He swims well' remarked Margo, 'and he goes out terribly far''I have no fear' said the Turk modestly. 'I am a superb swimmer, so I have no fear. When I ride the horse, I have no fear, for I ride superbly. I can sail the boat magnificently in the typhoon without fear'He sipped his tea delicately, regarding our awestruck faces with approval.'You see' he went on, in case we had missed the point, 'you see, I am not a fearful man.”