Society and the World

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second, that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think of what to do with the long winter evenings.

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for the money.

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.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

Publication is not necessarily a sign of success.

I think what’s most disturbing about success is that it’s very hazardous to your health, as well as to your daily routine. Not only are there intrusions on your time, but there is a kind of corrosion of your own humility and sense of necessary workmanship. You get the idea that anything you do is in some way marvelous.

Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

It’s terrible to have a success; everyone wants you to repeat it by writing the same thing over again.

You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite steadily, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.

Every writer’s assumption is that he is as other human beings are, and that they are more or less as he is. There’s a principle of psychic unity. [Writing] was not meant to be an occult operation; it was not meant to be an esoteric secret.

Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make.… They make them for their own protection, and to hell with them.

Resist much, obey little.

It’s not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.

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

There should be two main objects in ordinary prose writing: to convey a message, and to include in it nothing that will distract the reader’s attention or check his habitual pace of reading—he should feel that he is seated at ease in a taxi, not riding a temperamental horse through traffic.

Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader … by either the author or the people in the tale. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate.

Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young.

A boy has to peddle his book.

If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism. If you steal from many, it’s research.

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple; take it and copy it. Give references? Why should you? Either your readers know where you have taken the passage and the precaution is needless, or they do not know and you humiliate them.

Steal! And egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children, disfigure them and make ’em pass for their own.

Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.