Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.
The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.
I never cease to be amazed why some of my friends became famous and others, just as talented, didn’t. I’ve come to suspect it’s a matter of wanting fame or not, and those who don’t want it, don’t get it.
Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.
In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do – if he has to write, why then, he writes; and if he doesn’t feel the urgent need of writing, there are dozens of professions in which it is easier to earn a comfortable living.
Put cotton in your ears and pebbles in your shoes. Pull on rubber gloves. Smear Vaseline over your glasses, and there you have it: instant old age.
Any fiction should be a story. In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and the fact that in the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn’t a story.
Age is not different from earlier life as long as you’re sitting down.
Going back to Hemingway’s work after several years is like going back to a brook where you had often fished and finding the woods as deep and cool as they used to be.
It is the fear of being as dependent as a young child, while not being loved as a child is loved, but merely being kept alive against one’s will.
They tell you that you’ll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don’t tell you is that you won’t miss it very much.
Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens.