I read in order to write. I read out of obsession with writing.

In real life wishing, divorced from willing, is sterile and begets nothing.

If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, dont confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.

What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.

We have had, alas, and still have, the doubtful habit of reverence. Above all, we respect things as they are.

Is there a word more passionate than passion? Obsession, total immersion, the feeling that everything else doesn't matter.