“This highest kind of truth is never something the artist takes as given. It's not his point of departure but his goal. Though the artist has beliefs, like other people, he realizes that a salient c...”

“People will tell you that writing is too difficult, that it's impossible to get your work published, that you might as well hang yourself. Meanwhile, they'll keep writing and you'll have hanged you...”

“As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall a...”

“The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, its hard. Our culture teaches none of its false lessons more ...”

“Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.”

“The true artist plays mad with his soul, labors at the very lip of the volcano, but remembers and clings to his purpose, which is as strong as the dream. He is not someone possessed, like Cassandra...”

“But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.”

“There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”

“Perhaps the one unanswerable question in life is why so many of us choose to live in a fantasy world of our own creation that offers us nothing but pain.”

“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

“All established order forms a line of resistance against the threat of rupture and places its meager forces at the service of continuity. That everything should continue as usual is the bourgeois s...”

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.”

“I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is powerless against them. Yet ...”

“The relationship between truth and reason:"Truth cannot be reached by reason alone!”

“I writeNotFor the sake of gloryNot For the sake of fameNotFor the sake of successBut for the sake of my soul”