“A writer who knows what he is doing isn't doing very much.”
"he once said", quoted by Richard Flanagan, 2005. (Also quoted as: "Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.")
Nonfiction works
In jail, Cross-Country Kline to Dove Linkhorn.
Source: A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)
Context: But blow wise to this, buddy, blow wise to this: Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Never let nobody talk you into shaking another man's jolt. And never you cop another man's plea. I've tried 'em all and I know. They don't work. / Life is hard by the yard, son. But you don't have to do it by the yard. By the inch it's a cinch. And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.
"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)
Context: Well, I haven't consciously tried to develop [a style]. The only thing I've consciously tried to do was put myself in a position to hear the people I wanted to hear talk talk. I used the police lineup for I don't know how many years. [... ] I was just over on the South Side and got rolled. But they gave me a card, you know, to look for the guys in the lineup, and I used that card for something like seven years.
“Well, here you get to be a writer when there's absolutely nothing else you can do.”
"The Art of Fiction No. 11" (1955)
Context: I don't think the isolation of the American writer is a tradition; it's more that geographically he just is isolated, unless he happens to live in New York City. But I don't suppose there's a small town around the country that doesn't have a writer. The thing is that here you get to be a writer differently. I mean, a writer like Sartre decides, like any professional man, when he's fifteen, sixteen years old, that instead of being a doctor he's going to be a writer. And he absorbs the French tradition and proceeds from there. Well, here you get to be a writer when there's absolutely nothing else you can do. I mean, I don't know of any writers here who just started out to be writers, and then became writers. They just happen to fall into it.