“That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.”

“Hardly anyone about whom I deeply care at all resembles anyone else I have ever met, or heard of, or read about in literature.”

“Only something extremely dire and disabling will ever stop a real writer from writing. Retirement is never an option.”

“Honestly,” he says, “I judge writers on how they write queries. If you’re a good writer, you’re a good writer.” And if not, then not.”

“Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them.”

“He made writing look easy and critics hate that. They like evidence of a struggle, of creative agony, wringing the masterpiece out of one’s guts. After all, most critics think of themselves as writers, or had attempted to become writers. This leads to the bizarre situation in which failed writers pass judgment on writers who actually write for a living.”

“Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you're over. You've caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know.”