“So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book.”

“It's perhaps fitting that I write this introduction in jail.”

“If you are in a strait, a very good indication as to choice—perhaps the best you could get—is a book you have a great curiosity about. You are then in the readiest and best of all possible conditions to improve by that book.”

“I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.”

“Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if they open it and read it, they don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.”

“Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.”

“I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.”

“One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including — or perhaps especially — the failures.”

“The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.”

“What's the best part about writing a book?
Finishing it.”