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The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything i...more

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Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the p...more

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A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.

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It is the storyteller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

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I recognized my work for what it was--as unimportant a drug as cigarettes to get one through the weeks and years. If we are extinguished by death, as ...more

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So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, ...more

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A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

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Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the ...more