“It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.”

“What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.”

“Look, writers aren't perfect, I want to cry, any more than husbands and wives are perfect. The only unfailing rule is, If they seem so, they can't be.”

“If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.”

“The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.”

“The companionship of dead writers is a wonderful form of live friendship.”

“The imagination doesn’t crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever’s there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he’s been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it?”