…Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done—so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well.

I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

The first draft of anything is shit.

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

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.