It is a good rule never to see or talk to the author of a book one admires; it is disappointing if he is not what one expects, and it is worse if he is.
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.
Literature was born not the day when a boy crying 'wolf, wolf' came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying 'wolf, wolf' and there was no wolf behind him.
An author who enjoys writing may sometimes please other people by accident, but he can never pass on to any one else.
There are - as everyone knows - two kinds of writing: one coming out of your vitals and the other from the top.
The only way to write is to write. Writers write. If you get it down on paper, it's already a success.
When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.
