“The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.”

“What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.”

“I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.”

“This is what drives a young writer out of his head, this feeling that nothing is being said.”

“There is no real freedom for the man who is in so much of a hurry that he is annoyed by the human race and by the hot glaring afternoon sun.”

“The real story can never be told. It is untellable. The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time. There is no point in glancing at the past, in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art — that is, the meaningful-real.(The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952))”

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”