Sickness is a place, ... and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow.

I suppose half of writing is overcoming the revulsion you feel when you sit down to it.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

As for the blood and the head business, the blood and the head work together and what is not first in the blood can sometimes reach it by going first through the head and what is wrong in the blood can sometimes be tempered by the head.

I feel that discussing story-writing in terms of plot, character, and theme is like trying to describe the expression on a face by saying where the eyes, nose, and mouth are.

Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.

The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.