A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know wh…

You advise me, too, not to stray far from the ground of experience, as I become weak when I enter the region of fiction; and you say, 'real experience is peren…

I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all - what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to s…