Forward motion in any piece of writing is carried by verbs. Verbs are the action words of the language and the most important. Turn to any passage on any page of a successful novel and notice the high percentage of verbs. Beginning writers always use too many adjectives and adverbs and generally use too many dependent clauses. Count your words and words of verbal force (like that word “force” I just used).

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and then he is no longer a thief.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.

Kids are always the only future the human race has.

No enemy is so annoying as one who was a friend, or still is a friend, and there are many more of these than one would suspect.

Publication is not necessarily a sign of success.

The best that can be said for anybody is probably that you misunderstood him favorably.

The editor is a specialist about reading. His specialty is what is sufficiently general and common between a possible readership and what the author has to say. The tool he works with is himself. If the author cannot reach him, he can’t reach the editor’s readership either.

The fraud delights my soul, and if he is big and clever and conceals his fraudulence for years, I am all the more impressed and entertained by his achievement.