“A book comes and says, 'Write me.”

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

“I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by 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.”

“Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?”

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

“It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, 'I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me'. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing.”

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

“I cannot write long books; I leave that for those who have nothing to say.”

“Years ago I read a man named Machado de Assis who wrote a book called Dom Casmurro. Machado de Assis is a South American writer — black father, Portuguese mother — writing in 1865, say. I thought the book was very nice. Then I went back and read the book and said, Hmm. I didn’t realize all that was in that book. Then I read it again, and again, and I came to the conclusion that what Machado de Assis had done for me was almost a trick: he had beckoned me onto the beach to watch a sunset. And I had watched the sunset with pleasure. When I turned around to come back in I found that the tide had come in over my head. That’s when I decided to write.”