By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.

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There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

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When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

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Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

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Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?

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Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.

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Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don�t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

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I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

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Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.

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When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous.

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