A closed mind is a dying mind.

I'm tired of hearing you men say that this and that and the other isn't woman's work. Any work is woman's work that a woman can do well.

It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story.

There are people who have a penchant for cities-more than that, a talent for them, a gift of sensing them, of feeling their rhythm and pulsebeats, as others have a highly developed music sense, or color reaction. It is a thing that cannot be acquired.

I don't know what it is that makes a writer go to his desk in his shut-off room day after day after year after year unless it is the sure knowledge that not to have done the daily stint of writing that day is infinitely more agonizing than to write.

Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.

Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth.