I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

The beautiful and damned.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.

You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.

Sometimes you can lick an especially hard problem by facing it always the very first thing in the morning with the very freshest part of your mind. This has so often worked with me that I have an uncanny faith in it.

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

Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.

Reporting the extreme things as if they were the average things will start you on the art of fiction.