[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine.

What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.

As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way that I can.

A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed. Or so it is with me. Thus my writing life consists of spells of languor alternating with fits and spasms of mad typing. At all times, though, I keep a journal, a record book, and most everything begins in the form of notes scribbled down on the pages of that journal.

But hell, I do like to write letters. Much easier than writing books.

I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere.

Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'