The writer has little control over personal temperament, none over historical moment, and is only partly in charge of his or her own aesthetic.

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.

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

Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.