The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.
The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still ’tis Nonsense.
The history of a city was like the history of a family – there is closeness, and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.
The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
The first draft of anything is s***.
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
The core of my writing is not art but truth.
The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity.
That’s one of the things I try to teach my students – how to write piercingly.
Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied.
