Perhaps the best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one's reactions, answerable to no one's views.

I believe - I know (there are not many things I should care to dogmatize about, on the subject of writing) that writers need solitude, and seek alienation of a kind every day of their working lives. (And remember, they are not even aware when and when not they are working.) ... The tension between standing apart and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.

One can't measure how a mood of confidence comes about.

Fiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but undreamt of in the living of a single life.

in writing, sex doesn't matter; it's the writing that matters.

When I was a child, we seemed to be living in a world remote from the rest of the world. But television has made a great difference to all of us. If something happens where I live, you see it tomorrow or perhaps even at the same time it is happening there. It's not "one world" in the sense that conflicts are resolved in the world. But we are more one world in that we know what is going on and are psychologically influenced by what goes on around us.

Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.