New York Is Not Even A City,

I Make No Conscious Effort To Be Tough, Or Hard-boiled, Or Grim, Or Any Of The Things I Am Usually Called. I Merely Try To Write As The Character Would Write, And I Never Forget That The Average Man, From The Fields, The Streets, The Bars, The Offices And Even The Gutters Of His Country, Has Acquired A Vividness Of Speech That Goes Beyond Anything I Could Invent, And That If I Stick To This Heritage, This Logos Of The American Countryside, I Shall Attain A Maximum Of Effectiveness With Very Little Effort.

A Lot Of Novelists Start Late-conrad, Pirandello, Even Mark Twain. When You're Young, Chess Is All Right, And Music And Poetry. But Novel-writing Is Something Else. It Has To Be Learned, But It Can't Be Taught. This Bunkum And Stinkum Of College Creative Writing Courses! The Academics Don't Know That The Only Thing You Can Do For Someone Who Wants To Write Is To Buy Him A Typewriter.

Stealing A Man's Wife, That's Nothing, But Stealing His Car, That's Larceny.

A Home Is Not A Museum. It Doesn't Have To Be Furnished With Picasso Paintings, Or Sheraton Suites, Or Oriental Rugs, Or Chinese Pottery. But It Does Have To Be Furnished With Things That Mean Something To You.

That's All It Takes, One Drop Of Fear To Curdle Love Into Hate.