“Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.”

“Plenty of people were writing novels; in fact, if one did a survey in the street, half of Edinburgh was writing a novel, and this meant that there really weren't enough characters to go round. Unless, of course, one wrote about people who were themselves writing novels. And what would the novels that these fictional characters were writing be about? Well, they would be novels about people writing novels.”

“You can't say, I won't write today because that excuse will extend into several days, then several months, then... you are not a writer anymore, just someone who dreams about being a writer.”

“The writer's job is not to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here I am,” but to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here YOU are.”

“If a writer writes poems and short stories and novels, but nobody ever reads them, is she really a writer?”

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water”