A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic yet it seems like it's a great secret.
There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.
One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.
If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the...
Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.
But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
Inscribed on the back was a line from Virgil in Latin: Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the...
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great....
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
The rain was pattering hypnotically on the plane's exterior.
Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been...
