All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

Writing is both mask and unveiling.

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.

The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.

Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.... Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.

Remember that writing is translation, and the opus to be translated is yourself.

All I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.

All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation — it is the Self escaping into the open.