Don't worry about what your mother thinks of your language.

I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.

What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.

It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.

Using adverbs is a mortal sin.

At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about.

Try not to write the parts that people skip.

All the information you need can be given in dialogue.

Suddenly I remembered that laugh, it told a different story, our story.

The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.

Fear is a kind of bell or gong which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger. It is the soul's signal for rallying.

What better is there to sigh for than happiness, yesterday's or tomorrow's.

Real art must always involve some witchcraft.

Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn't do to drag them into everything, does it?

My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

Stand up for what you know is right.

He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.

The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.