Most people who are writers go through periods when they can't write.

Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process.

The greatest works of literature seem to embody both "art" and "morality".

These are the moments for which we live.

For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power.

I come from people who did not go to college. They didn't even finish high school. People who one might call ordinary Americans who are very hardworking.

I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.