“Good novel are written by people who are not frightened.”

“Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.”

“Is there anyone who has ever written so much as a love letter in which he felt that he had said exactly what he intended? A writer falsifies himself both intentionally and unintentionally. Intentionally, because the accidental qualities of words constantly tempt and frighten him away from his true meaning. He gets an idea, begins trying to express it, and then, in the frightful mess of words that generally results, a pattern begins to form itself more or less accidentally. It is not by any means the pattern he wants, but it is at any rate not vulgar or disagreeable; it is good art. He takes it because good art is a more or less mysterious gift from heaven, and it seems a pity to waste it when it presents itself.”

“Writing a novel is agony.”

“But it was frightening: or, more exactly, it was like a foretaste of death, like being a little less alive.”

“It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.”

“He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.”