Talent is a valued tormentor.

June, July, all through the warm months she hibernated like a winter animal who did not know spring had come and gone.

At one time I used to keep notebooks with outlines for stories. But I found doing this somehow deadened the idea in my imagination. If the notion is good enough, if it truly belongs to you, then you can't forget it-it will haunt you till it's written.

Most contemporary novelists, especially the American and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; theyre enraptured by their navels and confined by a view that ends with their own toes.

Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind. A valued tormentor.

But it's Sunday, Mr. Bell. Clocks are slow on Sundays.

I've never been a teacher in my life.