...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

Write to amuse? What an appalling suggestion! I write to make people anxious and miserable and to worsen their indigestion.

A writer edits his thoughts more thoroughly the more readers he has. You can tell I only have two readers, myself included.

A good story is a dream shared by the author and the reader. Anything that wakes the reader from the dream is a mortal sin.

The mysterious does not spell itself out in capital letters, as many writers believe, but is always between, an interstice.

A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

Sometimes a book isn't a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.Sometimes it's the only story you knew how to tell.

The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.

While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.

When you write about what you dream, you become a writer.When you dream about what you write, you become haunted by a curse.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.

Anyone who conceives of writing as an agreeable stroll towards a middle-class life-style will never write anything but crap.