“People always see me writing and ask me if they can read my writing. The answer is yes, after I publish it and they pay for it.”

“People say that writers write for money. From my own experience that's not true. I write for me. I publish for money.”

“But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.”

“You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.(Interview, The Paris Review)”

“She asked me could I read and write. I told her, "Of course, and I can talk too.”

“Odette nodded at my notebook, where I was writing as she spoke. 'Do the people in America really want to read this? People tell me to write these things down, but it's written inside of me. I almost hope for the day when I can forget.”