“Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.”

“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity”

“To live is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins. Everything living has a rhythm. Do you feel your music?”

“You can't write any form of fiction unless you enjoy reading it. You must be sincere in your approach. It's no good despising the form. So many people think they could earn some money from writing something for which they have no affection. It won't work. The first thing you have to have is belief.”

“Rhythm is a conception, not a physical reality. It is true that, to be realized in music, rhythm must be marked by some sort of sound, but this sound is not itself the rhythm.”

“If you have feelings about reading, you feel the rhythm of prose or of a poem like music. It awakens something in your soul and then of course you study, read, you grow up and you begin to understand the message and that is the first step towards understanding life.”