I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.

I think writing is a process that starts long before the writers are actually writers and probably goes on long afterward. It's rather like the way the Arabs weave rugs. They don't stop. They just cut them off at a certain spot on the loom. There is no particular beginning or end.

I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

I think we still believe that ambition is for boys.

There is still a popular fantasy, long since disproved by both psychoanalysis and science, and never believed by any poet or mystic, that it is possible to have a thought without a feeling. It isn’t. When we are objective we are subjective too. When we are neutral we are involved. When we say ‘I think’ we don’t leave our emotions outside the door. To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.

Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant.