“You don't have to get into writing – it's not like a pair of jeans... The only way to write is to write – the rest may or not follow.”

“Don't quit. It's very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it's very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can't get fired if you don't write, and most of the time you don't get rewarded if you do. But don't quit.”

“When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.”

“I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it.”

“Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.”

“Write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you are writing, and aren't writing particularly well.”