He was evidently the sort of person who posed questions that were traps for you to fall into.

I felt in him what women feel in men, something so tender, swollen, tyrannical, absurd; I would never take the consequences of interfering with it.

It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, "Read," but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, "Don't read, don't think, just write," and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you're going to be a writer you'll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think, "There must be something else people do," you won't be able to quit.

And did I not think then, What nonsense it is to suppose one man so different from another when all that life really boils down to is getting a decent cup of coffee and room to stretch out in?

She would live now, not read.

The images, the language, of pornography, and romance are alike; monotonous and mechanically seductive, quickly leading to despair.

In twenty years I've never had a day when I didn't have to think about someone else's needs. And this means the writing has to be fitted around it.