My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

A writer is the conscience of the world.

The chief trait of any given poet is always the spirit he brings to the observation of Humanity and Nature — the mood out of which he contemplates his subjects.

As a writer you must keep a tight rein on your subjective self — the traveler touched by new sights and sounds and smells — and keep an objective eye on the reader.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.

The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present.

Good writers touch life often.

Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.

Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: “Know thyself”. Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other.

A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.