Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols.

Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.

I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

I still need some more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.

The more I'm let alone and not worried the better I can function.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg adress was so short. The laws of prose writing are immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics. Fr letter to Maxwell Perkins 1945

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

Our job is to make others feel better and to find happiness. It will ultimately make you happy and abundant.

How could you love something so destructive?" I ask."Because this wolf doesn't care if your heart is whole or not, " you say. "It tastes just the same.

I’m fulfilling my calling when I raise my voice concerning injustice

...was an elegant woman in a city of so many thousands of elegant women...

It is by standing up for the rights of girls and women that we truly measure up as men.

What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?' said Sir James. 'He has one foot in the grave.' 'He means to draw it out again, I suppose.

For lack of any clearer idea, I just started acting one day. It had been in the back of my head for a while, but I think in some ways I was afraid to do it, and finally I just stepped up.

I'm not someone who doesn't want to see the films, but I like to see them as an end product when the whole nuance of the character is put together.

I can't walk in high heels, never mind dance in them.

I can only say I wish I had slept with everyone I am accused of.