“I write about power, that's my real subject - how you get it, what you do with it, how you abuse it. I'm equally wary of liberals and conservatives.”

Letter to his brother Jeff from Guadalcanal (28 January 1943); p. 28
To Reach Eternity (1989)
Context: I'm going to ask you something. If I do get killed, and I honestly don't see how I can help it, I want you to write that book we were thinking about when I enlisted. If I get it, it's a cinch I won't be able to do it, and it would make me feel a whole lot better to know that if not my name and hand, at least, the thot of me would be passed on and not forgotten entirely. You know, sort of put into the book the promise that I had and the things I might have written so at least the knowledge of talent wasted won't be lost... If I get it, no one will ever know to what heights I might have gone as a writer. Maybe if you wrote about the promise that was there, all wouldn't be lost.

How Do You Like Me Now?!, written with Chuck Cannon
Song lyrics, How Do You Like Me Now?! (1999)

Pt. 1: Bimini, Section 10
Islands in the Stream (1970)

A Letter from Cuba (1934)
Context: The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do.

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (2005)

Aged and Confused (2009)

Alan Axelrod in an interview with Frank R. Shaw, Aug 23, 2007 http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/axelrod.htm.

The "Robustness Principle", RFC 793 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0793.txt, Transmission Control Protocol, entire text of section 2.10 (September 1981).