“Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.”

“I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something to say and the power to say it -- only I don't know what it is, and I can't make use of the power. If there was some different way of writing...Or else something else to write about.”

“I do not believe that I should only write about what I know but that I should write also of the other.”

“If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?”

“Like all people, there are days I feel beautiful and days I don't. When I don't, I do something about it.”

“I just love that feeling when things are about to change. Like when you know that in a few seconds you're going to do something and become someone else.”