Did I throw the most important thing perhaps, by accident, away?

There are so many different types of writers. It's just sheer coincidence that they're all called writers.

Sanity ... is the most profound moral option of our time.

Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you're over. You've caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know.

Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.

Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.