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A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.

One way an author dies a little each day is when his books go out of print.

Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know what will happen. A novelist needs to feel what that is like.

A lot of writing's going down dead ends that don't go anywhere.

I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.

A writer stops writing the moment he or she puts the last full stop to their text, and at that point the book is in limbo and doesn't come to life until the reader picks it up and the reader flips the pages.

If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.

Sometimes a famous subject may even outlive his own obituary writer.

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

There's a point at which writing a book, or a long article, begins to feel like mental labor, and it's too painful to connect in the world in any real way mid-process. The only way to survive is to write until it is all said and done.