To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.

The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory. Some things have been lost forever, other things will perhaps be remembered again, and still other things have been lost and found and lost again. There is no way to be sure of any this.

And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.

Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist, except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.

Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.

Half the people I know want to be writers.Why do you say want? If you’re already doing it, then it’s not about the future. It already exists in the present.

He finds a fresh sheet of paper. He lays it out on the table before him and writes these words with his pen. It was. It will never be again. Remember.

At 4:32 I arrive at my desk, read what I have written the day before, rip it up, eat it, then sit, absolutely motionless for a period of six hours and eighteen minutes, waiting to be inspired

...نوشتن نوعی بیماری است، پدیده ای که می توان زکام یا تورم روح نامید؛ بنابراین هر کس می تواند در هر زمانی در زندگی به آن مبتلا شود.