“But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?”

“As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about. But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?”

“Don't you think that's the main reason people find [writing] so difficult? If they can write complete sentences and can use a dictionary, isn't that the only reason they find writing hard: they don't know or care about anything?”

“There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!”

“A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself; it is a child of solitude.”

“A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.”