Inspiration can pass through the soul just as easily in the midst of an orgy as in the silence of the woods, but when it is a question of giving form to your thoughts, whether you are secluded in your study or performing on the planks of a stage, you must be in total possession of yourself.

he was beginning to find that the office routines of Henry Yorke were useful, even essential, to the imaginative work of Henry Green. He feared his own volatility and often referred to his need for habitual routines to keep him sane. The job gave him day-to-day stability as well as experiences that he could use in his writing.

His mode of living consisted of daily visits to the British [Museum] reading-room, where he normally remained from nine in the morning until it closed at seven;

Proust didn’t care—if anything, he seemed to need the work to be painful. He thought suffering had value, and that it was the root of great art. As he wrote in the final volume of Remembrance of Things Past, “it almost seems as though a writer’s works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to

“I have always got to be the best,” she has said. “I’m absolutely compulsive, I admit it. I don’t see that’s a negative.”

A good doctor isn’t in a battle with his work; a good writer is locked in a battle with his work. In most professions there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. With writing, it’s always beginning again. Temperamentally, we need that newness. There is a lot of repetition in the work. In fact, one skill that every writer needs is the ability to sit

“For me, light is the signal in the transaction. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.”

he completed a novel before his three hours were up, Trollope would take out a fresh sheet of paper and immediately begin the next one.

he would read and reread classic cookbooks to relax himself before bed.