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"[W]riting means laying oneself bare: even the cleanest writer bares himself. If you do not like to bare yourself, be satisfied with your present job. Oh, I forgot to tell you that, in order to write, one must have something to write." (from "To a Young Reader")

"if you truly have the blood of a writer, you will find the time for writing no matter what, it will grow around you: and, for all that, your daily work, boring thought it may be, cannot help but supply you with precious raw materials for your evening or Sunday writing, beginning with human contacts, beginning with boredom itself. Boredom is boring by definition, but ... can be a vital and exciting exercise ...."

"The bond between a man and his profession is similar to that which ties him to his country; it is just as complex, often ambivalent, and in general it is understood completely only when it is broken: by exile or emigration in the case of one's country, by retirement in the case of a trade or a profession."

"The characters of a book are in truth strange creatures. They have neither skin nor blood nor flesh, they have less reality than a painting or a nocturnal dream, they have no substance but words, black doodles on a white sheet of paper, and yet you pass the time with them, converse with them through the centuries, hate them, love them, fall in love with them." [from "Writing a Novel"]

"'Ugly' wood does not exist, and there does not exist a tree whose wood has not found its specific application: the cedar for pencils, the linden tree for piano keys, balsa for the remote vessels which set sail from South America for the unknown West, but also for the chairs which movie actors break over each other's heads in the the collective brawls."

"I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine." [from the essay "My House"]