A writer is like a gypsy. He owes no allegiance to any government. If he is a good writer he will never like any government he lives under. His hand should be against it and its hand will always be against him.
Never write about a place until you’re away from it, because it gives you perspective. Immediately after you’ve seen something you can give a photographic description of it and make it accurate. That’s good practice, but it isn’t creative writing.
One battle doesn’t make a campagin, but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole war.
All the contact I have had with politics has left me feeling as though I had been drinking out of spitoons.
Why must all of the operations in life be performed without an anesthetic?
Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and destroys your reserves.
In the spring mornings I would work early while my wife still slept. The windows were open wide and the cobbles of the street were drying after the rain.
The only thing that can ruin a good day is people.
The fools think I am writing algebra but what I am really writing is geometry.
Optimism can keep a fool from accepting failure.
In stating as fully as I could how things really were, it was often very difficult and I wrote awkwardly and the awkwardness is what they called my style. All mistakes and awkwardness are easy to see, and they called it style.
A big lie is more plausible than truth.
Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.
To be successful in writing, use short sentences.
I was always a lonely person when I was with everyone.
Summer is a discouraging time to work – you don’t feel death coming on the way it does in the fall when the boys really put pen to paper.
Fascism is a lie told by bullies.
Night is always darkest before the dawn, and life is the same. The hard times will pass; everything will get better and the sun will shine brighter than ever.
There is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dissect out. It continues and is always valid.
There is no such thing as great writing – there is only great re-writing!