“Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.”

“A book comes and says, 'Write me.”

“Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. […] If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.”

“The men that write books, Carlyle says, are now the world's priests, the spiritual directors of mankind.”

“When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.”

“A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.”

“Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too good for the Earth; as a well-written book, or indeed as a book at all; and not a bewildered rhapsody; written, so far as writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever was!”

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”

“He comes as the head of that group of enlightened men known as the Spiritual Hierarchy of Masters. The existence of such a group was first made public in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky and later Alice A. Bailey, whose book, The Reappearance of the Christ describes the events which are now unfolding.”

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. […] it's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”