“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.", February 25, 1933]”

“When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.”

“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.”

“It is significant comment on the victory of science over magic that were someone to say if I put this pill in your beer it will explode, we might believe them; but were they to cry if I pronounce t...”

“Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four...”

“Youth is a period of missed opportunities.”

“Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone...”

“Five common traits of good writers: (1) They have something to say. (2) They read widely and have done so since childhood. (3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a "capacity for clear thought," a...”

“There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean hell, I know that.”