An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say.

A writers desire to write can only have come from previous experience of literature, and he'll start by imitating whatever he's read, which usually means what the people around him are writing.

For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him a formula he can exploit; for the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong.

To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph-mere stops.

Authorship of any sort is a fantastic indulgence of the ego.

A writer's life stands in relation to his work as a house does to a garden, related but distinct.

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.