I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.

He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say "when!"

I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.

Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.

I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.

She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when."

Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.

He was white and shaken, like a dry martini.

I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.

There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.

Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.

Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

The least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows.

It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.

To find a man's true character, play golf with him.

Golf... is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone, with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well.

Golf, like measles, should be caught young.

She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel.

Why don't you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.

Sudden success in golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt to unsettle and deteriorate the character.

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.

Flowers are happy things.

Few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks.

He was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say 'when!'

Boyhood like measles is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.

The supply of the milk of human kindness was short by several gallons

Some minds are like soup in a poor restaurant better left unstirred.

Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.

Writing songs has a therapeutic effect, and it either kills off love or wins the heart of the lover.

Writing novels is the most exciting.

That has to remain the principal reason for doing it, doesn't it? I know it's possible to write for money, and many very good writers have done so. But for me, it has to remain the principal thing that I actually want to do the writing.

Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.

Writing, overall, has never been what I'd call fun. It's fulfilling. It doesn't come real easy for me.

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.