Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.
People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
It sometimes takes days, even weeks, before a dog’s nerves tire. In the case of terriers it can run into months.
All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
But real life is only one kind of life – there is also the life of the imagination.
Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.
It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention.
Write about it by day and dream about it by night.
I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they.
There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments – moments of sustained creation – when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.
Writing is not an exercise in excision, it’s a journey into sound.
It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people.
A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can’t get it by breeding for it, and you can’t buy it with money. It just happens along.
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society – things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.
You’re terrific as far as I am concerned.