Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free from rust in the movable parts of his mind

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

What is success? It is a toy balloon among children armed with pins.

Men are not against you, they are merely for themselves.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to.

Every man should be allowed to love two cities, his own and San Francisco

A book is never finished; it's abandoned.

He has a profound respect for old age. Especially when it's bottled.

Sometimes I think my writing sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.

News is history shot on the wing. The huntsmen from the Fourth Estate seek to bag only the peacock or the eagle of the swifting day.

I don't have a problem with a world full of vampires and zombies but with one where the law forbids me from shooting them.

It is good taste and good taste alone that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

No excuses; those were just weak.

The race by vigour, not by vaunts, is won.

I have not wasted life, but life hath wasted me.

I didn't get into this position by being like a stiff sitting on the set in a folding chair. I did it by walking around on the streets and stirring things up.

There are two metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabinet, and the other in the camp--gold and iron. He that knows how to apply them both may indeed attain the highest station.

To be world champion brings fame. The fame brings good things and bad things too. I try to take the good with calmness.

Because many advances have happened, we've lost the urgency (and that's just human nature) that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains.

I don't worry about how folks want to characterize me.