Oh, all you immigrants and visionaries, what do you hope to find here, who do you hope to become?

Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am.

People are more than you think they are. And they're less, as well. The trick lies in negotiating your way between the two.

But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.

He's one of those smart, drifty young people who, after certain deliberations, decides he wants to do Something in the Arts but won't, possibly can't, think in terms of an actual job; who seems to imagine that youth and brains and willingness will simply summon an occupation, the precise and perfect nature of which will reveal itself in its own time.

A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if hes any good, is not an entirely benign entity in the world.

At the risk, then, of being shunned by some of my gloomier peers, I venture to tell you that writers work like demons, suffer greatly, and are also happy, in unmistakable ways, some of the time. If we had no knowledge of happiness, our novels wouldn't sufficiently resemble real life. Some of us are even made a little bit happy, on occasion, by the writing process itself. I mean, really, if there wasn't some sort of enjoyment to be derived, would any of us keep doing it?