The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.

We could live like counts. ... If all that money is out there, I might as well hack a little on the side and put the novel off.

She clung to that which had robbed her, as people do.

I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.

In every writer there is a certain amount of the scavenger.

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.