“Because nobody but a reader ever became a writer.”

“Those Grimm brothers," she said with a sigh, "they'll never amount to anything." And she was right because all they ever became was writers.”

“I know that no reader ever asks a question. A writer must force his favors upon his readers.”

“Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter - as indissolubly as if they were conceived together…." - The Crack-Up”

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

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”