“The only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed”

“Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people.”

“I’m sure you’ve run into people who’ve said, “If I just had the time, I could write a book.” Everybody thinks they can write a book. And everybody’s life story could be the subject of a book — I don’t care who they are. It depends how you approach it. But writing itself, either you have it or you don’t have it. -->”

“Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.”

“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.”

“No one who writes a good book is really dead.”

“The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written.

(, 8 September 1935)”

“I cannot write at all, but if I could how could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books? I will not write at all.”

“If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.”

“There’s something about writing books that gives us the permission to discuss things that aren’t as easy to talk about in everyday life. To me, the whole point of writing books is to look at the unexamined, the unspeakable, and the unarticulated.”