“...nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.”

“If (a writer) has applied himself to an art for 15 or 20 years and they’ve gotten good at it, and they’re expected to do something else to support themselves while the industry that sells this craft supports itself very well, something is badly wrong. Morally wrong.”

“Grown-ups shouldn’t finish books they’re not enjoying. When you’re no longer a child, and you no longer live at home, you don’t have to finish everything on your plate. One reward of leaving school is that you don’t have to finish books you don’t like.”

“Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties."(Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)”

“The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.”

“It was from just a few sentences that a writer learned anything from another writer.”

“It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.”