“I am not a slow writer, I am not a fast writer . . . I am a half-fast writer.”

“Are you going to shake my hand,or am I going to rip your heart out?”

“I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn”

“I have also noted, over the course of our friendship, that his hearing is curiously erratic. He can hear a lizard-bird scratching itself half a mile away, but occasionally seems unable to hear the politest of requests no matter how loudly I shout them at him.”

“I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.”

“I am a writer, not a transcriber.”

“I am not retiring. Writers don't retire. Writers never stop writing.”