You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.

When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life

People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly.

If football players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.

Sometimes it's nice to have a man around the house. But a dog will clean the dishes.

The ingredients for another Palestinian uprising are always there because as long as there is so much violence it is bound to explode. How, I cannot tell. But people will not accept it forever.

May our adversities make us strong. May our victories make us wise. May our actions make us proud.

Comedians want to be rock legends for a day - that sounds fun to them.

People will try to label you not good enough, too slow, too old, too many mistakes. You can't stop negative comments or prevent negative labels, but you can choose to not let them hold you back.

We should constantly use the most common, little, easy words which our language affords.

You will never be greater than the thoughts that dominate your mind

When an elder turns to face the dead, that means he turns away from facing the future and his own retirement in Phoenix, let's say. He turns and finds himself facing the children.

Character is better than ancestry, and personal conduct is more important than the highest parentage.