“Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.”
“All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.”
“I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.”
“Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.”
“(N)ot writing was hard work, almost as hard as writing.”
“The writer who possesses the creative gift of fantasy owns something of which he is not always master; something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself.”