“The writer's only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art”

“This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”

“One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”

“If researchers seek only the kinds of order with which Westerners are today familiar, they will miss, or reject as disorder, all other orders.”

“I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts.”

“The disorder in Yashar's apartment was that comfortable littering and stacking that only another writer can recognize as order - the considered scatter of papers and books a writer builds around himself until it acquires the cozy solidity of a nest.”