I believe the writer... should always be the final judge. I have always held to that position and have sometimes seen books hurt thereby, but at least as often helped. The book belongs to the author.

The book belongs to the author.

Writing, like drawing is an art, and whatever conveys the meaning is justified.

If you are not discouraged about your writing on a regular basis, you may not be trying hard enough. Any challenging pursuit will encounter frequent patches of frustration. Writing is nothing if not challenging.

It often puzzles me when people think that matters connected with sex ought to be suppressed. Sex itself cannot be suppressed, and the efforts to do it, it seems to me, result in greater damage than it can do itself. After all, it was not an invention of man, but of God.

Every good thing that comes is accompanied by trouble.

You have to throw yourself away when you write.

I do not think anyone can read War and Peace too much. I read it six times.

You are all right on time, except for the fact that time is the enemy of us all, and especially of the writer.

What we publishers think is that our function is to bring everything out into the open, on the theory that we have an adult population that knows values, or can learn them, and let them decide.

It is those people who know that they are right because some outside or higher power conveys the conviction to them who do the great damage in the world.

Learn about writing from reading. That is the right way to do it.