“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do.”

“There are very few innocent sentences in writing.”

“Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation”

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”

“The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.”

“It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.”

“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.”

“I have huge respect for short stories—I just find them much harder to get right than a novel. A novel is a lot baggier and it gives you more leeway to go on for too long or to make mistakes. Whereas in a short story, every sentence, every word, matters—and that’s very hard. I think it’s easier to write too much than it is to write exactly the right thing.”

“Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don’t know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hard and tortuous to write a bad one.”

“You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know”