At some point in your life, if you're lucky, you get to design the way in which things evolve.
You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer
Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
Writing is like a contact sport, like football. Why do kids play football? They can get hurt on any play, can't they? Yet they can't wait until Saturday comes around so they can play on the high school team, or the college team, and get smashed around. Writing is like that. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it!
Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.
An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.
A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.
Nobody now is going from department to another department. Only Walt did that. I was very fond of him, really.
Spring. . . made fair false promises which summer was called upon to keep.
Rage against the world, if you like, but quietly, or the Guardians will awake.
I miss him still today: his long, whiskery eyebrows, his huge hands and hugs, his warmth, his prayers, his stories, but above all his shining example of how to live and how to die.