The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment.

Not necessarily your mother, or indeed mine, but, as it were, the ideal mother, somebody who doesn't care about your achievements. Unfortunately, most people are not our mothers. Most people make a strict correlation between how much time, and if you like, love -- not romantic love, though that may be something -- but love in general, respect --they are willing to accord us, that will be strictly defined by our position in the social hierarchy.

"Writing is a way of making sense of the world, of finding patterns in the chaos."