Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter.

The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.

It is a sign of maturity... to find explanations in charity.

The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.

Elizabeth Hardwick told me once that all her first drafts sounded as if a chicken had written them. So do mine for the most part.

I spend three hours a day writing and the rest of my day getting over it.

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