"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."

"About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment."

"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man."

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."

"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think."

"It's not about the writing. It's about the feelings behind the words."

"An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do."

"If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul."

"The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block."

"In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning."