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A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn't write? But that fortunately hasn't proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

Writing is a discipline: it's almost all about holding back.

The more you write, the more you're capable of writing.

Writing, for me, has always been a way of not having a career.

So writing is a very, very difficult position to obtain... and retain.

I don't have the notion that everybody has to write in some single academic style.

It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.