I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules.

Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.

Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

It is almost impossible for an Anglo-Saxon to write of sex without being dirty.

A critic is a man who writes about things he doesn't like.

There is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something.