we know that the Furies do not come uninvited.

The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own.

If I didn't know the ending of a story, I wouldn't begin. I always write my last lines, my last paragraph first, and then I go back and work towards it. I know where I'm going. I know what my goal is. And how I get there is God's grace.

You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.

What we need is endless courage.

I started out with nothing in the world but a kind of passion, a driving desire. I don't know where it came from, and I don't know why - or why I have been so stubborn about it that nothing could deflect me. But this thing between me and my writing is the strongest bond I have ever had - stronger than any bond or any engagement with any human being or with any other work I've ever done.

Lovemaking surely must be, for human beings at our present state of development, one of the more private enterprises. Who would want a witness to that entire self-abandonment and helplessness?