Writing is the most solitary of arts.

...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds; for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot.

Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.

Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies.

For madness must be punished in a world in which mere sanity is prized. The revenge of the ordinary upon the gifted.

That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?

Writers are notoriously unable to know about themselves. Faulkner thought 'The Fable' was his best novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald liked 'Tender Is the Night,' an experimental novel.