Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own

Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.

The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.

In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.