I'm A Novelist, So I Can't Write

The Imagination Doesn't Crop Annually Like A Reliable Fruit Tree. The Writer Has To Gather Whatever's There: Sometimes Too Much, Sometimes Too Little, Sometimes Nothing At All. And In The Years Of Glut There Is Always A Slatted Wooden Tray In Some Cool, Dark Attic, Which The Writer Nervously Visits From Time To Time; And Yes, Oh Dear, While He's Been Hard At Work Downstairs, Up In The Attic There Are Puckering Skins, Warning Spots, A Sudden Brown Collapse And The Sprouting Of Snowflakes. What Can He Do About It?

He Feared Me As Many Men Fear Women: Because Their Mistresses (or Their Wives) Understand Them. They Are Scarcely Adult, Some Men: They Wish Women To Understand Them, And To That End They Tell Them All Their Secrets; And Then, When They Are Properly Understood, They Hate Their Women For Understanding Them.

Everything In Art Depends On Execution: The Story Of A Louse Can Be As Beautiful As The Story Of Alexander. You Must Write According To Your Feelings, Be Sure Those Feelings Are True, And Let Everything Else Go Hang. When A Line Is Good It Ceases To Belong To Any School. A Line Of Prose Must Be As Immutable As A Line Of Poetry.

We Live, We Die, We Are Remembered, We Are Forgotten.

The Writer Must Be Universal In Sympathy And An Outcast By Nature: Only Then Can He See Clearly.