"The shortest answer is doing the thing."

"For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can."

"I never had to choose a subject - my subject rather chose me."

"The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it."

"The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself."

"If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work."

"Cowardice... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination."

"Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination."

"Never mistake motion for action."

"We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a person's duty to understand the world rather than simply fight for it"

"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"

"Never confuse movement with action."

"The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green."

"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love."

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work a"

"I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success."

"Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre."

"I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can."

"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."

"I kissed her hard and held her tight and tried to open her lips; they were closed tight."

"I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink."

"Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective"