The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.
I gravitate toward the larger worldview questions such as, Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What does it mean to know another person? To love someone? Of course, those questions are sort of in the background as I'm playing with language in the foreground, but those are the informing questions.
They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.
The more opposition there is, the better. Does a river acquire velocity unless there is resistance? The newer and better a thing is, the more opposition I will meet with at the outset. It is opposition which foretells success. Where there is no opposition there is no success either.
Colouring does not depend on where the colours are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on form and outline, on where that is put.
A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it is such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.