Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.

War is not won by victory.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.

Your blood coagulates beautifully.

It's enough for you to do it once for a few men to remember you. But if you do it year after year, then many people remember you and they tell it to their children, and their children and grandchildren remember and, if it concerns books, they can read them. And if it's good enough, it will last as long as there are human beings.

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.