“When a writer sits down and he psychoanalyzes, he’s ruining his work.” —Isaac Bashevis Singer via Paris Review

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, there is less cleaning up to do afterward." — Kurt Vonnegut

“I think books should have secrets, like people do.” —John Updike

"She imagines a world where it would be possible to un-fuck: not just to pull the cocks out of the cunts and the anuses and the mouths, not just to remove the tongues from the cocks and the anuses and the cunts, but to restore a person, by an act of love, to what he was like before he was ever fucked. To undo fucking with a gesture, with a word—with a silence. Like restoring antiques, it would be a kind of fraud, but as with antiques people might not mind the deception. If only we could believe that such a thing was possible! she thinks to herself, on the verge now of tears. Strether bows to her and she thinks, Fuck me, unfuck me, fuck me, fuck me! " — Henry James, The Ambassadors

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/05/16/scenes-not-included-in-henry-james-the-ambassadors-nsfw/

“A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.” —Don Delillo

"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking." — William Butler Yeats

How does it feel to be a writer? Just like this:

“Childhood was terrifying for me. You’re three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate.” —Mary Karr (via The Paris Review)