Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.

You can make anything by writing.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

This lasted longer than I could describe even if I wrote pages and pages about it.

Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.