You Bring Up Your Children To Be

You Could Reason With Someone Who Was Halfway Educated And Appeal To His Intelligence, But I Felt Helpless In The Face Of Utter Stupidity.

It Came To Me That Hell Would Not Be Fire And Smoke After All But Arctic, Everything White And Frigid. Hell Would Be Not Anger But Indifference.

I Don't Think I Began To Be A Professional Writer Until I Learned My Weaknesses And What I Couldn't Do. This Forced Me To Compensate.

I Read A Lot Of Detective Stories Because They Always Deliver. They Give You A Beginning, A Middle, And An End - A Resolution. The Modern Novels I Read Don't Always Deliver Because I'm Looking Essentially For A Story. As In Shakespeare, "the Play's The Thing." In Particular I Read Detective Stories For Pacing, Plot And Suspense.

I Don't Like To Think In Terms Of Writing Ten Or Twelve Pages A Day. Usually I'm Writing A Scene, And It's Always With The Idea, "i Wonder What Is Going To Happen." Or Sometimes I Write About Something That Affected Me Emotionally The Day Before And That I Don't Want To Lose. I'm Very Unorganized At First; But Finally It Comes Into A Structure Where Consciously I'm Working On A Novel Per Se.