Writing a book is like rearing children -- willpower has very little to do with it. If you have a little baby crying in the middle of the night, and if you depend only on willpower to get you out of bed to feed the baby, that baby will starve. You do it out of love.

People who take photographs during their whole vacation won't remember their vacation. They'll only remember what photographs they took.

For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning?

Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.

Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

Caring passionately about something isn't against nature, and it isn't against human nature. It's what we're here to do.