An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

As president, you can get all kinds of advice from all kinds of people. But at the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values and your vision and the life experiences that make you who you are.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow… that are the aftermath of war.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

Remember this, folks – I am a Hillbilly, and I don’t always Bet the same way I talk. Good advice is one thing, but smart gambling is quite another.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

I can have people around a lot more because I’m not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel. My non-novel, I mean.

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

Don’t go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you’ll land in trouble too big for you.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine… before she realizes she’s reading.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

A word to the wise is infuriating.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

I start each book when it’s ready and never before.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

Lots of young players have triumphed at United, so why can’t it happen to me? I’m not worried I’m young – it’s an incentive to do the best I can.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.

I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that’s not in me. I want to lift people up.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

These young guys are playing checkers. I’m out there playing chess.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.