“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.”

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.”

“We need more true mystery in our lives Hem- he said. The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most. There is of course the problem of sustenance”

“Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”

“The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.”

“World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.”

“It's this way, see--when a writer first starts out, he gets a big kick from the stuff he does, and the reader doesn't get any;then, after a while, the writer gets a little kick and the reader gets a little kick; and finally, if the writer's any good, he doesn't get any kick at all and the reader gets everything.”