Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
Caesar had perished from the world of men Had not his sword been rescued by his pen.
Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.
In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
He is limp and damp and milder than the breath of a cow.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
It is a sobering thought that each of us gives his hearers and his readers a chance to look into the inner working of his mind when he speaks or writes.
Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
When you're a writer, you no longer see things with the freshness of the normal person. There are always two figures that work inside you, and if you are at all intelligent you realize that you have lost something. But I think there has always been this dichotomy in a real writer. He wants to be terribly human, and he responds emotionally, but at the same time there's this cold observer who cannot cry.
When I am dead, I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.'
The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you.
The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death.
Just get it down on paper, and then we'll see what to do with it.
Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
Tennessee Williams said if he got rid of his demons, he would lose his angels.
