Its [Resistance] aim is to shove us away, distract us from doing our work.

When you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.

Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance?

Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?

I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.