At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, ‘To hell with you.’

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

Don’t you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don’t even have to be true!

Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about ‘a’ man.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

The writer’s job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.