In writing, you must kill all your darlings. - William Faulkner

"Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window."

"The best fiction is far more true than any journalism."

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

"If a story is in you, it has to come out."

"A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid."