The act of composition is a series of discoveries.

The Shadow had no imagination. He neither looked at naked women nor thought of ridding the world of dictators like Hitler or Mussolini.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing - none of that is writing. Writing is writing. Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time.

I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority.

When you're working well, you don't do research. Whatever you need comes to you.

A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.