We are doing the most important possible work in the world when we open the door and reveal our creative nature.
It is the work of the Universe itself.

Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.

The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

Blessed are the weird people:
poets, misfits, writers
mystics, painters, troubadours
for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.

If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.