“It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.”

“If a writer starts worring about what he or she has left out or forgotten, they might not be able to write even a single line.”

“No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is in the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has”

“A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.”

“More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?”

“Man knows, and in the course of years he comes to know it increasingly well, feeling it ever more acutely, that memory is weak and fleeting, and if he doesn't write down what he has learned and experienced, that which he carries within him will perish when he does. This is when it seems everyone wants to write a book. Singers and football players, politicians and millionaires. And if they themselves do not know how, or else lack the time, they commission someone else to do it for them...engendering this reality is the impression of writing as a simple pursuit, though those who subscribe to that view might do well to ponder Thomas Mann's observation that, 'a writer is a man for whom writing is more difficult than it is for others”