I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even simply, I should destroy every scrap, every trace, every notebook and live some other way.

I believed that if I was to call myself a writer, I should live on writing. If I could not live on it, even simply, I should destroy every scrap, every trace, every notebook and live some other way.

She and Marie were Montreal girls, not trained to accompany heroes, or to hold out for dreams, but just to be patient.

I write every day as a matter of course It is not a burden. It is the way I live.

Like every other form of art, literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death. The only question worth asking about a story — or a poem, or a piece of sculpture, or a new concert hall — is, Is it dead or alive?

[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy.

Decide what the rest of your life is to be. Whatever you are now, you might be forever.