Writers are always at the edge of the inferno, and the fire is licking at our toes. Luckily, this turns us on!

What I discovered was is that it's rare to find a person that you feel very intimate with, and you can sleep with lots of people and not find what you're looking for.

Conflict is the soul of literature.

[Henry Miller] was such a scribomaniac that even when he lived in the same house as Lawrence Durrell they often exchanged letters. For most of his life, Henry wrote literally dozens of letters a day to people he could have easily engaged in conversation - and did. The writing process, in short, was essential. As it is to all real writers, writing was life and breath to him. He put out words as a tree puts out leaves.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.

I knew I was in England by the smell.