“If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write. ”

“I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.”

“What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.”

“The public has no idea that writing is a disease, and that the writer who publishes is like a beggar who exhibits his sores.”

“To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.”

“I count myself as one of the number of those who learn as they write and write as they learn.”