A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

Nothing gives an author so much pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors.

Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book.

You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.