I try to leave out the parts readers skip.

I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.

What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.

It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.

Using adverbs is a mortal sin.

At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about.

Try not to write the parts that people skip.

All the information you need can be given in dialogue.

Assumption is one dreadful and incurable disease, which sticks to the soul and wiggles across the skin.

Now when the flowers are in full bloom, It is the ashes from the past that hidden loom.

Heed not thy feeling. Do thy work.

My ideal city would be one long main street with no cross streets or side streets to jam up traffic. Just a long one-way street.

That's not free market when companies go out and move and sell back into America. No, that's the dumb market, O.K.? That's the dumb market.

He's a great - he's a great professor. He retired recently, but.But Peter Halley as well.

Good suits don't come from anywhere, though - I mainly wear Armani, Louis Vuitton and Burberry.

No great work of art is ever finished.

Tell her we don’t bite.” “I don’t lie to my friends.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.