I work most days and if you work most days and you get at least a page done a day, then at the end of the year you have 365. So the pages accumulate and then I publish the books.

I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.

I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out.

--nor had I understood til then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others

A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.

Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.