The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.

Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.

... in nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt[ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.