When you learn to read you will be born again...and you will never be quite so alone again.

A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory...dictiona ries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.

Of course one never knows in draft if it's going to turn out, even with my age and experience.

It's only by being obstinate that anything is got, or done.

If books were Persian carpets, one would not look only at the outer side. because it is the stitch that makes a carpet wear, gives it its life and bloom.

The best would be to have friends who came and went away; but if I had to choose between their never coming or never going away, I think I would choose that they do not come.

People don't know the consolations of being unsuccessful ... If I had been successful I should have had no peace or time.