“A good writer always works at the impossible.”

“The only good writer was a dead writer.”

“Work is the only good thing.”

“No matter how good a man is, there's always some horse can pitch him.”

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”

“A writer of stories is a liar.”

“Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?”