The best writing is certainly when you are in love

As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early 'forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.

Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning, where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for.