I never had a highfalutin' view of what I write.
Shakespeare was a man who wrote poetry. I'm a man who writes poetry. Why not compare yourself to the best?
Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
Great writing is great writing. It's as simple as all that.
As a writer, you have to believe you're one of the best writers in the world. To sit down every day at the typewriter filled with self-doubt is not a good idea.
Anything well written with good language and clarity and honesty is worth doing. It comes out of the same tradition as Shakespeare.
I'd like my writing to be recognized with a Grammy.
Irene Nemirovsky was a prolific writer punctiliously devoted to her craft.
It doesn't matter what kind of book you write - you ought to write it well and with some kind of style and elegance.
I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows.
Nobody's strong enough to stand up under a flood of weak material.
You don't make a decision about being a writer. There was a point, aged 21, when it became clear that this is who I am. The choice is how good you are going to be at it and how hard you are going to work.
If something is well-written, it has a chance to be good and if it's not well-written, it will not be good. It could even become popular, but it won't be good.
The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.
The highest praise a writer can give another is to say he wishes he had written his book. I wish I had written Forty Words for Sorrow. Giles Blunt has a tremendous talent. If you miss Forty Words for Sorrow, you'll miss one of best novels of 2001.
I feel as if I'm clearly part of a trend among writers who take themselves seriously - and I confess to taking myself as seriously as the next writer.
I think it's the people who have no doubt that every word they put down is gold that probably don't write very well.
I don't think anything you've written is immortal as yet.
My preference is for really good writing, and I just really don't care where it is.
If you want to be a good writer, be the best writer in the world. That's what I've done.
There's something very strange about associating me with that prize. I had hoped for it in a more directed way as a journalist. Somehow as a journalist you know there are Pulitzers out there and you can work hard and get one. To win it for Fiction seems unbelievable.
The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.
Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.
