Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs. – Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction, 1991

[G]usto thrives on freedom, and freedom in art, as in life, is the result of a discipline imposed by ourselves. Moreover, any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others. – Marianne Moore (1887–1972), lecture, 1948

Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words. – Norman Mailer, 1998