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.

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.

When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.

The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.

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.

Novel writing wrecks homes.

Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor.

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.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

I'd rather be in trouble for having done something than for not having done anything.

That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man.

But whatever it is, if it doesn't give you strength from rendering its service it's not your purpose.

Knowledge makes you strong, wisdom makes you powerful, and love makes you invincible.

Only you can make your dreams come true ...or not.

Even though we are peripheral to the slavery, our action is necessary to overcome a horrific evil.

Drinking Shirley Temple with my Mary Janes on, let's say that every possibility waits

If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.

I discourage a cult of personality.

I was really educating myself on the environment, but I didnt realize it was so connected to politics, connected to globalization.

There is no sphere of human thought in which it is easier to show superficial cleverness and the appearance of superior wisdom than in discussing questions of currency and exchange