because the hardest boss a man can ever have is himself.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you're forced back on your own imagination.

Sometimes [...] real love is silent as well as blind.

...knowing that to be a librarian was to come as close as any human being can to sitting in the peak-seat of eternity's engine.

There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall.

A hurt body and mind aren't just like a dictatorship; they are a dictatorship. There is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusion.

the look of the sky as the day's blue blood runs out of its cheek.