Writing is an undertaking for the modest.

When writing is good, everything is symbolic, but symbolic writing is seldom good.

Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to find out what I was going to say.

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, "I am going to produce a work of art." I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart in you?

I measure my life in sentences pressed out, line by line, like the lustrous ooze on the underside of the snail, the snail's secret open seam, its wound, leaking attar.

The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

I do not think you should read about writing while you are writing.

Writing, like drawing is an art, and whatever conveys the meaning is justified.