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The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

I am a writer, and the duty of a writer is not only to furnish pleasant pursuits for the mind and taste: he will be held accountable if things useful to the soul are not disseminated by his works and if nothing remains after him as a precept for mankind.

If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.

A writer has to live with a sense of honor.

The treasure of a writer is to maintain their own style.

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

It's essential to have sacred time for writing. All successful authors have some daily commitment to keep on-track and moving forward.

I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms before you every day, in every sentence.

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.