A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.

What I'm trying to tell you is that there are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

The best style is the style you don't notice.

Because a man can write great works he is none the less a man.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.