“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”

1. “Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”


2. “You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.”


3. “About adjectives: all fine prose is based on the verbs carrying the sentences. They make sentences move."



4. “You ought never to use an unfamiliar word unless you’ve had to search for it to express a delicate shade–where in effect you have recreated it. This is a damn good prose rule I think…. Exceptions: (a) need to avoid repetition (b) need of rhythm (c) etc.”

5. “You must begin by making notes. You may have to make notes for years…. When you think of something, when you recall something, put it where it belongs. Put it down when you think of it. You may never recapture it quite as vividly the second time.”

6. “To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.”


7. “You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”


8. “Invent a system Zolaesque…but buy a file. On the first page of the file put down an outline of a novel of your times enormous in scale (don’t worry, it will contract by itself) and work on the plan for two months. Take the central point of the file as your big climax and follow your plan backward and forward from that for another three months. Then draw up something as complicated as a continuity from what you have and set yourself a schedule.”

9. “Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.”


10. “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”