“Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.”

“If he wrote it, he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.”

“I believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.”

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

“Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.”

“I am trying to make, before I get through, a picture of the whole world--or as much of it as I have seen. Boiling it down always, rather than spreading it out too thin. (On Writing.)”

“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”