“One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.”

“One has to be just a little crazy to write a great novel”

“To confess one's guilt and one's original sin is little, very little; one must wean oneself away from them completely. And that takes more than a little time.”

“Being good is something that one must choose over and over again, every day, throughout the day, for the rest of one’s life.”

“It is as difficult to suppose a person intending to write a modern English, as to suppose him writing an ancient English, novel; that is a label which begs the question. One writes the novel, one paints the picture, of one's language and of one's time, and calling it modern English will not, alas! make the difficult task any easier.”

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.”