“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.”

“I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.”

“To a born-again atheist like myself, it is clear that each of us has multiple selves, talents, perceptions. But to the Roman Catholic, unity is all.”

“Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.”

“Since nothing is free, to each his price.”

“a writer must always tell the truth (unless he's a journalist)”

“Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made”