“You don't write poems sitting at a typewriter; you write them swimming or climbing a mountain or walking.”

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

“Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.”

“Shaw...has a woman ever asked you to write a poem for her?""Good God, no," Gideon replied with a snicker. "Shaws don't write poetry. They pay others to write it for them and then take the credit for it.”

“It's easy to convince men to love you, Puck. All you have to do is be a mountain they have to climb or a poem they don't understand.”