...writing is not a performance but a generosity.

Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.

Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.

Self-trust is so important. When you launch on a story, make your neck loose, feel free, good-natured. And be lazy. Feel that you are going to throw it away. Try writing utterly unplanned stories and see what comes out.

I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

it is when you are really living in the present-working, thinking, lost, absorbed in something you care about very much, that you are living spiritually.

it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come. ... Pour out the dull things on paper too-you can tear them up afterward-for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively.