Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.

One battle doesn't make a campagin, but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole war.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

The time to work is shorter all the time and if you waste it you ... have committed a sin for which there is no forgiveness.

I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends.

One cat just leads to another. The place is so damned big it doesn't really seem as though there were many cats until you see them all moving like a mass migration at feeding time.