“Art educates. That's why writers must know life. . .If the writer knows life, his work is often progressive, even though his own consciousness may lag behind.”

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”

“The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him...A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.”

“Art has a noble task: to educate man. That's why the writer's part in our society is a most responsible one. The writers are the architects of human souls and the critics are the architects of the writer's souls.”

“written works do not produce fast reactions as pictures and sculptures and music do. it takes no effort to see or hear. but to read - to grasp what the writer has done - requires commitment. engagement. as is the case with most art, the relationship between the maker and the audience is remote in time and space. the writer is nowhere to be seen when the reader takes up the book, or even dead. but most often, books go unread...thus the writer, knowing this as writers do, is even more alone...yet writers write. and knowing what they know makes their isolation almost a sacrament.”

“Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.”