Quote

I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.

I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.

I think writers write for their consciences, they write for their own true audiences, for their souls.

A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if he's any good, is not an entirely benign entity in the world.

Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.

Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.

It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments.

Wherever a writer grew up, they're obviously influenced by that area, and I'm sure their characters are pulled from those experiences.