When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.

Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.

Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.

We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very good, true, and serious.

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.

Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.

No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.

Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude.

Courage comes from a surrendered heart, a prepared mind, and a good conscience.

It's part of a writer's job to be nosy about everything.

People can act so nice, bringing you food and all, but in the end they are nothing but buzzards. Waiting to pick your bones.

Taking my drink, I moved around the bar to her. Her smile was a little crooked as I sat down. I guessed it had been a wet night for platinum blondes.

If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.

I can't believe that I changed so little. I expected to look old and hollow and gray, but I guess it's only me on the inside that has shriveled and deteriorated.

Coffee, whiskey, and fishing poles. That’s really all you need in life.

Movie stars need to retain some of that mystique if you are a big movie star.

As I get older I find myself thinking it all begins with Shakespeare.

Every time I see him, he's not there.