“Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, "How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?" and avoid "How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?"”

“How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.”

“A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.”

“If it was easy, everyone would do it rather than going around telling you their ideas and saying how they could be a writer if they had the time.”

“Collaborations are unnatural. The writer is a jealous god. He builds his universe without interference. He resents the carping of mentally deficient critics, and the editor’s capricious demands for revisions. Let two writers try to make one universe, and their defenses get in the way.”

“If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.”

“No matter how various the subject matter I write on, I was a science-fiction writer first and it is as a science-fiction writer that I want to be identified.”

“I don't want to be a writer so I can write about my life. I want to be a writer to escape from it.

+ Then you shouldn't be a writer.”

“That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.”

“The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.”