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

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.

There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

You have to kill to survive. People have been doing it forever. I eat meat, and I eat fish. If I were on a deserted island I would need that to survive.

We are ashamed at the sight of a monkey--somehow as we are shy of poor relations.

This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.

A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.

I've dreamt of being in a movie musical for a long time. For some reason I never even thought 'Les Mis' would be possible.

I came out of the womb born to sing and dance. I have to follow my heart.

Uggs. I think they're ugly. And I think big sunglasses are kind of overrated. I like big sunglasses but not those huge, round ones.

Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else.

It was pretty good. Even the music was nice.