“Scarcely anything in literature is worth a damn except what is written between the lines.”

“No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.”

“One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.”

“Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.”

“When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting.”

“I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.”

“Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients.”

“It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.”

“That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.”

“Drawing the line,
The Boundary line
Between this form and that
Is what the mind does.”