We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

Find a pile of gold and sit on it.

Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.

An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged yourself.