Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad– including your own bad.

The Freudians describe the conscious as a small lit area, all white, and the unconscious as a great dark marsh full of monsters. In their view, the monsters reach up, grab you by the ankles, and try to drag you down.

Nicknames are potent ways of cutting people down to size.

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.

What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have to say, 'Oh, what this really is is so-and-so,' reducing it to a simple formula.

What I had that others didn't was a capacity for sticking to it.