“Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?”

“You write your first novel with the desperation of the damned. You're afraid that you'll never write anything else, ever again.”

“You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.”

“It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.”

“When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You're not likely ever to get all these things, and you're not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don't, but that is -- and should be -- your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling.”

“The thing is not to write what no one else could have written, but to write what only you could have written.”