“If writers were good business men, they'd have too much sense to be writers.”

“If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.”

“Too many writers are trying to write with too shallow an education. Whether they go to college or not is immaterial...a good writer needs a sense of the history of literature to be successful as a writer.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men--many men--unfortunately aren't anything.”

“It's not Jane Austen, it's not Henry James. But this writer, or writers, well, they're pretty damn good too.”