We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.

Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.

Believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.

I say money has no value; it's just the way you spend it.

Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time.

Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice.

Don Quixote — I read that every year, as some do the Bible.

Dear God, let me be damned a little longer, a little while.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. [Light in August]

In every writer there is a certain amount of the scavenger.

Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.

When ideas come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't.

Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.

When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar.

War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.

It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret.

True poetry is not of earth, 'T is more of Heaven by its birth.

Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.

A man never gets anywhere if facts and his ledgers don't square.

Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.

The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies.

...the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

In my opinion it's a shame that there is so much work in the world.

That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing - from reading.

Knowing not grieving remembers a thousand savage and lonely streets.

It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.

I'm inclined to think that a military background wouldn't hurt anyone.

The writer has three sources: imagination, observation, and experience

Your illusions are a part of you like your bones and flesh and memory.

...It seems hard that a man in his need could be so flouted by a road.

I've got to feel the pencil and see the words at the end of the pencil.

Love in the young requires as little of hope as of desire to feed upon.

Writing a first draft is like trying to build a house in a strong wind.

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died.

I draw no petty social lines. A man to me is a man, wherever I find him.

Hemingway shot himself. I don't like a man that takes the short way home.

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

He is thinking quietly: I should not have got out of the habit of prayer.

Riches is nothing in the face of the Lord, for He can see into the heart.

...how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.

Gettysburg. . . . You cant understand it. You would have to be born there.

I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.

You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is.

And sure enough, even waiting will end...if you can just wait long enough.

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

Don't bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.

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