Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none

We spend our lives talking about this mystery. Our life.

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.

Life is what our character makes it. We fashion it, as a snail does its shell. A man can say: I never made a fortune because it is not in my character to be rich.

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.

Our dream dashes itself against the great mystery like a wasp against a window pane. Less merciful than man, God never opens the window.

You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.