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Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press.'

Sometimes a manuscript is like bread dough. You have to abuse it.

You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.

Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.

The writer's duty is to keep on writing.

I can almost always read a new manuscript overnight.

When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.

I long for, not a writer's retreat - I can write in any situation - but a reader's retreat.