So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.

One has no talent. I have no talent. It's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.

No building was safe from the furniture, the pictures, the human beings that it would presently contain.

I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It's the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate.

Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.

I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist.

That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.