You tell me over and over and over again, my friend, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
You are writing for your contemporaries - not for Posterity. If you are lucky, your contemporaries will become Posterity.
I never change, I simply become more myself.
Novels usually evolve out of 'character. ' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.
Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.
That person is most cultivated who is able to put himself in the place of the greatest number of other persons.
Home is where the heart is, until we get a chance to bury it. Home is where the heart pulled the nails out of its feet, and fled.
I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they're hearing something other than what I'm hearing.
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. . . . We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father—a noble, pious man.