"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."
"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
"You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore."
"A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid."
"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good."
"Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing."