I don't believe other people are ever as foolishly excited as I am while I'm working. How could they be? Writers would have to live in trees.

You might drop your heart into me and you'd never hear it touch bottom.

No, no the mind I love must still have wild places - a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown litde wood, the chance of a snake or two (real snakes), a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with those litde flowers planted by the wind.

To be alive and to be a ‘writer’ is enough.

The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough.

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.

Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.