Others

Word has somehow got around that the split infinitive is always wrong. That is a piece with the outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady.

There really are no characters in plays; there are relationships . Where there are only characters and no relationships, we have an unsatisfactory play.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Advice to young sportswriters: Read. And think. But as little as possible about sports.

You must write for children in the same way you do for adults, only better.

Readers of biographies like their meat rare.

You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader’s arm, like a drunk, and say, “And then I did this and it was so interesting.”

[The] three characteristics a work of fiction must possess in order to be successful: 1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot. 2. The author must feel a passionate urge to write it. 3. He must have the conviction, or at least the illusion, that he is the only one who can handle this particular theme.

[The] three characteristics a work of fiction must possess in order to be successful: 1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot. 2. The author must feel a passionate urge to write it. 3. He must have the conviction, or at least the illusion, that he is the only one who can handle this particular theme.

As a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Be in love with yr life Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind Blow as deep as you want to blow Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

I don’t preach patience to you, but cynicism; it is the most comforting of philosophies. You will get over your present difficulties only to run into something worse, and so on until the last sad scene. Make up your mind to it—and then make the best of it. That is, do the best you can within the limits of your chance. If you can’t write a book a year, then write one every two years .

Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency … to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.

A note: despair at the badness of the book; can’t think how I ever could write such stuff—and with such excitement: that’s yesterday: today I think it good again. A note, by way of advising other Virginias with other books that this is the way of the thing: up down up down—and Lord know the truth.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

The editor is a specialist about reading. His specialty is what is sufficiently general and common between a possible readership and what the author has to say. The tool he works with is himself. If the author cannot reach him, he can’t reach the editor’s readership either.

Get stewed: Books are a load of crap.

American writers drink when they are “blocked” and drunkenness—being a kind of substitute for art—makes the block worse.

American writers drink when they are “blocked” and drunkenness—being a kind of substitute for art—makes the block worse.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.