 Everything was in stark and dreadful contrast with the trivial crises and counterfeit emotions of Hollywood, and I returned to England deeply moved and emotionally worn out. |
| There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end. |
| The fools ran after me and I ran after the whores, foolish though I realized such a proceeding to be. |
| The work is with me when I wake up in the morning; it is with me while I eat my breakfast in bed and run through the newspaper, while I shave and bathe and dress. |
| When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask. |
| A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted. |
| Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know. |
| They managed to find time... to tell me that there was no chance of my being accepted for service and that really I should be surprised to still be alive. |
| I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers. |
| Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor. |
| A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts. |
| I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea. |
| With two people and luggage on board she draws four inches of water. Two canoe paddles will move her along at a speed reasonable enough in moderate currents. |
| The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day. |
| There is still need to think and plan, but on a different scale, and along different lines. |
| Novel writing wrecks homes. |
| The doctor who applied a stethoscope to my heart was not satisfied. I was told to get my papers with the clerk in the outer hall. I was medically rejected. |
| I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this. |
