I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.

In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior; in America, it's an excuse for a form of behavior.

Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good.

Wanton stars galloped neighing like unicorns in blue meadows.

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.'(on Ernest Hemingway.