“Fear is the major cargo that American writers must stow away when the writing life calls them into its carefully chosen ranks.”

“...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.”

“On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.”

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

“Don't say you're a writer if you're not writing. Even if you're writing, don't call yourself a writer. Say instead, 'I write.' It's the verb that's important, not the noun.”

“It is the only life I care about—to write, to go out occasionally and ‘lose myself’ looking and hearing and then to come back and write again. At any rate that’s the life I’ve chosen.”