“All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find …” — Elizabeth Bowen

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.