"It's not a matter of time. I set a realistic objective: how can I inch along to the next paragraph? Inching is what it is."
"I wrote eight novels like that, working at night and in the early morning, while holding down a daytime job."
"I am an agonizingly slow writer. I try to set a five-hundred-word limit a day when writing. I'll sit down around 9 a.m. (after loading up on lots of coffee)."
"I get a lot of work done in hotel rooms. The one solace for loneliness is work. I hand write and then I type. I don’t have a word processor. I write slowly."
"My favorite time to write is between 5 to 10 a.m., because that way you have the total silence before the world starts chasing you down."
"In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me."
"I would love to be one of these prolific writers who comes out with a book every two years. But I guess I’m just not that kind of writer."
"I write for about three hours in the morning—from about 9:30 till 12:30—and I do another hour’s work between 6 and 7 in the evening."
"I’m not a words-per-day kind of guy. I always felt that if you have an artificial number, it probably means that you don’t want to be writing, anyway."
"For most of my life, the ritual was to get to work at seven or eight in the morning and work for five or six hours, until I had 1,000 words I was proud of."
“I’ve stayed with it for over 50 years and it’s paid off.”
“What do I need in order to release my imagination?”