I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them.

Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?

Food doesn't exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented.

If Shakespeare's great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his perspective; each is vying with the others for dominance, but in the end, in tragedy, most of these voices will die, to be replaced by the yet more vigorous voice of a younger generation.

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.

The brain is a muscle of busy hills, the struggle of unthought things with things eternally thought.