Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

To write well, express yourself like common people, but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do.

They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.

Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.