"I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it."

"You ask me why I do not write something....I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results."

"You must not come lightly to the blank page."

"In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment."

"If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away."

"Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book."

"Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good."

"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."

"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."

"First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity."