“I cannot write to anyone outside myself--if I tried, it would be a horrible story, flat and lifeless. I write to myself. That's the only person I'm trying to please.”

“I only composed and experimented for myself and not to please anyone else.”

“If I’m required to identify myself on a form, I write “teacher.” I’ve been a teacher almost as long as I’ve been writing. [Pause. ] I think of myself less as a writer than as a person who writes — or tries to. Each morning is a kind of obstacle course in which the obstacles seem to have all the advantage.”

“And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside myself,
you would not know
that the worst of anyone
can be, finally,
an accident of hope”

“I don't write in Portuguese. I write myself.”

“I try to write to the story, as opposed to writing for the reader…”

“If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that that.”

“I don't like to write anything down on paper that I would not say to myself.”

“I write
to astonish myself”

“Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.”