“You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.”

“The idea occurred to him when he was twenty. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming — what should I do? — with an answer taking shape: nothing.”

“Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it will begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that won’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.”

“I have an idea and a first line -- and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I’m going to say, or where it’s going. I have some idea of how long it’s going to be -- but not what will happen or what the themes will be. That’s the intrigue of doing it -- it’s a process of discovery. You get to discover what you’re going to say and what it’s going to mean.”

“Not being a big one for having friends, I had no idea what I was going to do with Aubrey, you know, to entertain him.”

“If you're a lumberjack, you know what to do. You see trees, and you still have a job! If you're a writer, you see a blank page. You don't know if you still have a job. You might have great ideas—you may have no ideas.”