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

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

I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.

Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?

When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . . . that was a quality God's image carried with it . . . when you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.

I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.

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.