I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.

When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life

People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly.

If football players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

How may I hate that which I love with such intensity of passion? How should I abhor that for which my every drop of blood is boiling?

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

People are taken aback by a confident, pretty girl who knows what she wants in life and isn't going to let anyone get in her way. And you know what it's all about? Jealousy.

I was a waitress. I was pretty good at it. I liked to solve those puzzles-you know, when to put the dinner order in, that sort of thing.

For Tibetans, the real strength of our struggle is truth - not size, money, or expertise.

The whole "misery loves company" thing never applies more than when you're breaking up. The thought that the other person is doing fine is simply too much to bear.

I throw raps that attacks like the Japs at Pearl Harbor

Without a doubt there are women who would vote intelligently. There are also men who knit socks beautifully.

People look for morals in fiction because there has always been a confusion between fiction and philosophy.

Objectivity is just male subjectivity.